Hanoi (VNA) - Prime Minister NguyenXuan Phuc has approved a project that would build a national database of wasteresources, helping authorised agencies better control the discharge of wastenationwide.

According to the newspaper Dien Dan Doanh Nghiep (Business Forum), the project will conductsurveys, assessments and classify waste resources around the country, as wellas their environmental impacts. Based on the study, authorised agencies willdevelop mechanisms and policies to better control waste resources.

The development of the database on wasteresources will include the building of an overall structure of waste resources.Of that, a database on waste resources will be located at the Ministry ofNatural Resources and Environment and linked to ministries, sectors andlocalities; and a database on waste resources under the management of theMinistry of Public Security and the Ministry of National Defence.

The implementation of surveys, assessments andclassification of waste resources and the development of databases on wastesources must be carried out according to a specific plan, and will be closelymonitored and supervised during the time of implementation. Results from lastyear’s economic survey and other relevant surveys should be used as reference forthe process.

The waste resource database must be scalable,flexible, and ensure connection from central to local levels in line with thee-government framework.

It was necessary to review and promulgate legaldocuments and regulations for the management, exploitation, operation, updatingand use of information from the database on waste resources. The projectwill be implemented from now until 2021.

Waste discharge from factories in industrial andeconomic zones, or private businesses, have become issues of public concern dueto pollution levels and severe consequences, affecting the livelihoods ofpeople and other economic sectors.

In HCM City, ten industrial zones and threeexport processing zones discharge about 32,000 cubic metres of industrial waste everyday. All industrial parks and export processing zones have built wastetreatment systems, but pollution in the surrounding area still occurred due tothe weak monitoring on the operation of waste treatment facilities.

In Hanoi, 19 out of 43 industrial zones stilllack wastewater treatment systems. Worse, four out of 24 zones equippedwith waste treatment systems have substandard systems and five have not yet puttheir systems into operation.

Nguyen Phong, former director of the GeneralStatistics Office’s Department of Social and Environmental Statistics, saidthat it was necessary to unify the national database on waste resources.

In addition, the project should take intoaccount the challenges and risks of results from the surveys as the quality ofself-reported surveys were the least effective.

He also added that software systems that couldlink to monitoring stations at emission sites would be more effective.-VNA