54 per cent of IPs Have No Wastewater Treatment Facilities - Survey

Up to 54 per cent of Vietnam’s industrial parks (IPs) had no wastewater treatment facilities, heard a conference Jan 12 held by Finance Research Institute in Hanoi.

 

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City took the lead of the list of most polluted localities nationwide, said Prof-PhD Bui Thien Son of the National Institute for Science and Technology Policy under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

 

In HCMC, six out of 14 IPs have wastewater treatment facilities and the other IPs are only starting to study building, Son added.

 

The ministry’s inspection teams found that 80 per cent of polluting factories in the two cities’ IPs were run by private domestic companies, 11 per cent by foreign invested firms and 9 per cent by state-owned businesses.

 

Some of delegates in the event proposed to use tax tools to manage environment.

 

Vietnam now has 200 industrial and export processing zones, which are home to more than 5,500 foreign and domestic investment projects, creating jobs for more than a million people.

 

The IPs discharge some 225,000 cubic meters of wastewater a day and only 30 per cent of this volume was treated. This means 160,000 cubic meters of untreated wastewater flows directly into rivers and canals a day.

 

Statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s report showed that the IPs nationwide throw away some 30,000 tons of solid and harmful waste, while treatment of the waste is still insufficient, causing pollution in many localities. (Vietnam Economic Times, SGT, Economy & Urban)