Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has approved a project that would build a national database of waste resources, helping authorised agencies better control the discharge of waste nationwide.

Waste water treatment system at Bao Minh Industrial Zone in Nam Dinh Province.

According to the newspaper Business Forum, the project will conduct surveys, assessments and classify waste resources around the country, as well as their environmental impacts. Based on the study, authorised agencies will develop mechanisms and policies to better control waste resources.

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

The implementation of surveys, assessments and classification of waste resources and the development of databases on waste sources must be carried out according to a specific plan, and will be closely monitored and supervised during the time of implementation. Results from last year’s economic survey and other relevant surveys should be used as reference for the process.

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

It was necessary to review and promulgate legal documents and regulations for the management, exploitation, operation, updating and use of information from the database on waste resources. The project will be implemented from now until 2021.

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

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

In Hanoi, 19 out of 43 industrial zones still lack wastewater treatment systems. Worse, four out of 24 zones equipped with waste treatment systems have substandard systems and five have not yet put their systems into operation.

Former director of the General Statistics Office of Viet Nam’s Department of Social and Environmental Statistics, Nguyen Phong, said that it was necessary to unify the national database on waste resources.

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

He also added that software systems that could link to monitoring stations at emission sites would be more effective. – VNS