Hanoi (VNA) - DeputyPrime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung said on January 8 that incidents such asthe mass poisoning of fish off the coast of Vietnam in 2016 should never happenagain. “It was a painful lesson,” he said.

Dung was speaking at a meeting to examine the main tasks of the nationalenvironmental sector, including why the nation’s land-use effectiveness isstill lower than in other countries in the region - and how to handle endlessland petitions.

Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Tran Hong Ha said the meetingaimed to assess the sector’s activities during 2017 and set new targets thisyear.

Deputy Prime Minister Dung said poor management by authorised land-use agencieswas to blame for many land petitions in 2017.

The main problem was the limited implementation of policies related to landissues in several localities.

Data from the ministry revealed it had dealt with 3,094 land petitions in 2017.

To achieve new targets, Dung ordered the ministry to quickly build a landdatabase as well as gradually modernise the public service managing land underthe model of electronic government services.
He said the ministry was told to finish issuing land-use right certificates forState owned forest enterprises this year.

Minister Ha said that ensuring water security was also another important taskto focus on this year.

Agreeing with Ha, Dung said water security was one of the pressing problemschallenging the country. Vietnam had suffered from lack of fresh water due topollution, rising sea levels and salinity intrusion.

Thus, he said, the ministry had to improve its assessments on water resourcesand raise public awareness on using and exploiting water resources.

Additionally, Dung said the ministry was required to focus on mobilisingfinancial domestic and international support to effectively implement theNational Strategy on Climate change.

Consecutive typhoons and floods, triggered by climate change, killed 386 peopleand caused a total damage of nearly 60 trillion VND (2.63 billion USD) in thecountry in 2017.

Dung said that the environment sector had to tighten controls on the quality ofwaste-water discharged into the environment this year.

“It is absolutely not allowed to let an incident like the Formosa incidenthappen this year,” he said.

After the incident, the lesson was drawn that developing the economy had to berun parallel with protection environment, he said.

“We now need to put the task of protecting the environment to the highestlevel,” he said.

The Formosa incident occurred in April 2016, when hundreds of tonnes of fishdied in waters off four coastal provinces of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri andThua Thien–Hue.

The Taiwanese Hung Nghiep Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation claimedresponsibility for the disaster, admitting that it had released toxicwastewater into the sea along these provinces.

It pledged to compensate more than 11.5 trillion VND (500 million USD) tosupport local fishermen and recover the polluted marine environment.-VNA