LookAtVietnam – The HCMC government is engaging the private sector in environmental protection and is also increasing funds for environmental protection.

A factory in Tan Binh Industrial Park in HCMC emits black smoke.

“To create drastic change in environment protection, the city encourages private participation in collecting, transporting, recycling and treating solid wastes,” the city’s vice chairman said in his statement presented at the seminar.

Private enterprises will be assisted in replacing public environment companies to supply more environmental services in the city, he said.

Tin noted, “There have been more private enterprises in the city supplying services and technologies for environmental protection such as waste treatment.”

The budget for environmental protection is also increasing, Tin said at the environment seminar held by the Environment Police Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.

The city spends 3-5% of its total annual budget on environmental protection. In 2009, the city expects to spend some VND1,095 billion on environmental protection, much higher than the VND500 million spent in 2006, according to the city’s Department of Finance.

He, however, complained about the poor awareness about environmental protection among several enterprises although the city has taken many strong measures to save the environment and punish violators. To save cost and inflate profit, many enterprises in industrial parks and export processing zones in the city are still reluctant to invest in waste treatment facilities.

Therefore, the situation is deteriorating in the city, with most canals and rivulets and the air polluted by untreated industrial wastewater, and toxic gas and smoke.

Participants in the seminar heard solutions for protecting the environment at the industrial parks and export processing zones, and agreed that the underlying reason behind all violations of the environment was the insufficient penalty imposed on violators.

Dao Anh Kiet, director of the city’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said the Penal Code provides for penalties against those polluting the environment. However, in reality, it is not easy to determine the offenses because of unspecific stipulations in the law.

At the moment, some 950,000 cubic meters of wastewater is discharged into the city’s environment a day, including some 53,000 cubic meters of industrial wastewater. In addition, there are no effective measures to treat nearly 500 tons of harmful wastes and industrial toxic smoke discharged each day both inside and outside industrial parks in the city.

Ngo Anh Tuan, deputy director of the HCMC Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority, or Hepza, told the Daily that from now on, Hepza would hold developers of IPs and EPZs accountable for any violation of the environment law inside such zones.

The city has approved the establishment of the HCMC Environment Protection Association to help people understand the need to protect the city’s environment, which is suffering from increased pollution.

Dang Van Khoa of the HCMC People’s Council said on Monday that the association members would be enterprises, scientists and individuals who wish to appeal for environmental protection. The association’s executive committee is expected to be announced later this month.

VietNamNet/SGT