Anti-pollution efforts to be part of officials’ assessment
June 12, 2014 Category Environment, Pollution
Local government officials who fail to achieve their annual airborne pollution reduction targets may be criticized directly by top leaders, under an assessment method released by the central government. Zhai Qing, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection, said that beginning this year, assessment of officials for their anti-pollution efforts will be divided into two parts. Their performance on air quality improvement will account for half of the assessment marks given during annual appraisals. The targets are included in the Airborne Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013-17) unveiled on September 12. The plan sets out goals for 338 cities for a marked improvement in air quality over five years. Under the plan, for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional cluster, concentration levels of PM2.5 must be cut by 25% by 2017 from the 2012 level. The target for the Yangtze River Delta region is a reduction of 20%, and for the Pearl River Delta region, 15%. The concentration levels of PM10 must fall by at least 10% for the rest of the country. The other half of the marks on appraisals will be based on the local governments’ measures to reduce air pollution, such as managing pollution from industries and motor vehicles. There are four categories for the appraisals: excellent, fairly good, pass and fail. The method can measure local governments’ overall efforts to deal with airborne pollution on a yearly basis and is not simply results-driven, said Chai Fahe, Vice President of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences. In 2018, the officials’ work in the past five years will be assessed comprehensively. If air quality targets for 2017 are not met, the officials will fail the appraisal no matter how many measures they have taken to improve air quality.
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