Ministries tackle pollution, public housing issues

Ministries under the State Council, China’s Cabinet, responded to a series of concerns from media outlets as well as the public in the past week, mainly concerning environmental protection and subsidized public housing.

Tackling pollution

The Ministry of Environmental Protection said that by May 19 it had sent 23 inspection teams to factories and enterprises in Hebei province and Beijing and Tianjin municipalities and they had found 242 enterprises at fault, accounting for about 74 percent of the total number of inspected enterprises.

Among those enterprises, 31 were found to have failed to install pollution-tackling facilities, while 23 were found to have dysfunctional facilities, said the ministry, which started the inspection in early April. One enterprise was cheating in online monitoring of pollutant emissions.

The ministry also said that there had been many cases of enterprises refusing to allow inspections, with three cases occurring in Handan and two in Hengshui — both cities in Hebei. Relevant departments had made further investigations into such cases, the ministry revealed.

The ministry described in detail how those enterprises refused to receive the inspection teams and urged the local governments to pay attention to those cases and sanction harsh punishment.

Public housing

The State Bureau of Letters and Calls on May 16 released the results of supervising and handling 48 cases concerning subsidized lowpriced public housing since mid-April. It is the first time that the bureau released results of supervision of such a field.

number of enterprises found to have violated relevant pollution prevention laws and regulations in a recent inspection by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin