Chinese environment inspectors vow to ‘get tough’ on local officials over pollution

Name: Fresh sandstorm hits Beijing following its worst storm in a decade
Uploaded: 2021-04-21T13:21:51.000Z
Duration: 1 min 45 s
Description: Fresh sandstorm hits Beijing following its worst storm in a decade

Ministry reveals details of cases including Tieling authorities who ‘long ignored’ complaints about waste water going into river

Vice-mayor of another city, Chongzuo, is shown on state television being taken to view a tainted pond

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A chemical plant on the Yangtze River in Hubei is dismantled in 2018 as part of efforts to curb pollution. Environment inspectors say they will “get tough” on officials who fail to act. Photo: Xinhua

William Zheng

Published: 9:21pm, 21 Apr 2021Updated: 9:21pm, 21 Apr 2021

Chinese environment inspectors have vowed to “get tough” on local officials who do not take action on pollution, revealing details of cases uncovered in their latest round of checks to state media.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment said eight local governments had failed to adequately deal with pollution problems in the provinces of Shanxi, Liaoning, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hunan and Yunnan, and in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

It made the assessment on Friday, after it sent environment inspection teams to those areas 10 days earlier.

In northeastern Liaoning, inspectors said Communist Party and government officials in the city of Tieling had “long ignored” complaints about residential waste water being discharged into a local river, according to reports carried by most state media outlets including broadcaster CCTV. They accused officials of “sitting on their hands” instead of fixing sewerage networks and treatment plants that had broken down in recent years.

The ministry said a temporary pipeline had been hastily installed in late March ahead of the inspection in a bid to show that the problem had been taken care of.

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Fresh sandstorm hits Beijing following its worst storm in a decade

On Saturday, the inspectors named and shamed Chen Feng, the vice-mayor of Chongzuo in Guangxi, on state television in a report that became a hot topic on social media. CCTV aired footage of Chen being taken by inspectors to a polluted pond in the southern city, where he was asked if he could smell the fetid water. Chen told them on camera that he “didn’t expect the smell to be so strong”.

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