The province’s environmental protection administration urge local environmental protection bureaus to focus on tackling issues of pollution in communities in the coming three months.

The campaign is designed to help community residents to solve their environmental headaches. The province’s environmental protection administration coordinated the efforts of publicity, environmental control and monitoring departments in the campaign. It organized its 13 offices to go to 13 cities directly under the jurisdiction of the province to guide the work.

According to the plan, from October through December of this year, the environmental protection administrations at all levels will make an investigation of the environmental problems in communities and get to know the environment-related demands of the local residents. They will have to tackle those most urgent problems such as restaurant smokes and noises and have them resolved before a deadline. On this basis, they will set up hotlines for environmental complaints from community residents. The problems the masses complain most will have to be tackled on the spot.

In the “green community” campaign, the province encourages each community to set up a special publicity window, 10 publicity boards, issue 100 environmental protection-related books and 1000 publicity cards. Training classes for community cadres were held and an environmental related knowledge publicity campaign concerning the clothes, foodstuffs, housing and travel was carried out to ensure that people lead an environmentally healthy and safe life. The environment in the communities will be monitored and the community residents are encouraged to safeguard their own environmental rights. The environmental awareness of the community residents constantly improves thanks to such publicity work.

(www.cenews.com.cn November 26, 2002)