HCM City (VNA) - Owners of landfills in the city willhave to open them for periodical monitoring by people, said Le Van Khoa, Vice Chairmanof HCM City’s People’s Committee.

Khoa said from July onwards, owners of four landfills at Da Phuoc,Vietstar, Tam Sinh Nghia and Phuoc Hiep will have to let local people visitthese areas to evaluate the waste treatment technologies and monitor theenvironment.

According to Nguyen Toan Thang, from the city’s Natural Resourcesand Environment Department, every day the city discarded over 7,000 tonnes ofsolid domestic waste, 300 tonnes of toxic waste, and 16 tonnes of medicalwaste.

Besides this, the air pollution had been terrible with smoke beingemitted from nearly 8 million vehicles and coal furnaces, Thang said.

Currently, the waste collection and classification in the city isoverlapping and ineffective. Landfills are causing serious environmentalpollution.

Thang said the city had implemented measures to furthereffectively collect and classify waste, such as building waste collectingstations, setting up businesses of waste collection, and informationdissemination to people.

Currently, a household had to pay waste collection fees of just 15,000VND to 20,000 VND (6 - 8 US cents) per month.

The department had proposed a plan to increase the fees. Under theplan, the fee would be 50,000 VND (2.2 USD) next year and continue to rise inthe following years.-VNA