Viet Nam Net
21 October, 2013
More and more cries for help have been resounded from industrial zones, where people have to live together with untreated waste water, factories’ smoke and hazardous solid waste. Developing ecological industrial zones could be a solution to the problem.
The participants at the workshop on the waste water management held some days ago in Can Tho City once again raised their concern about the pollution in industrial zones (IZ).
The number of IZs has been increasing over the last 20 years, from one in 1991 to 289 in 2012. The number of the industrial workshop complexes had soared to 878 by the end of 2012.
In Mekong Delta alone, there are 120 IZs and workshop complexes which cover an area of 25,000 hectares, while the figures are expected to increase to 240 and 50,000 hectares by 2020.
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, of the 179 operational IZs, only 143 IZs have or are building concentrated waste water treatment systems.