Ministry vows to better protect land resources
( 2002-03-11 10:55 ) (1 )

The utilization of land and mineral resources should be done in strict accordance with established programmes, and any violators should be severely punishment.

Land and Resources Minister Tian Fengshan made these remarks on Sunday while pledging more efforts to better protect the country's cultivated land and mineral resources during a national work conference.

According to Tian, all of the country's provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, as well as a number of cities, have had detailed land use programmes approved by the State Council.

The use of such programmes has proved effective in protecting the country's limited arable land, said Tian, "because there is no excuse for anyone who fails to do what he has promised to do."

Last year, the ministry, with the help of a remote sensing monitoring system, successfully detected and stopped the abuse of over 10 thousand hectares of land.

Tian therefore urged local authorities to put their mineral resource programmes in place as quickly as possible, as such programmes at present lag far behind the general programmes on land use.

So far only Zhejiang and Shanxi provinces have had their general programmes on mineral utilization approved by the State Council.

Nine other areas, such as East China's Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, are still waiting for such approval.

According to Tian, the ministry is pushing for the establishment of a strong supervising team to closely watch the implementation of these programmes across the country.

"While we have been reducing staff in a bid to simplify examination and approval procedures, this supervising team should be given as much support as possible, both in funds and personnel," he said.

So far, altogether 17 regions have seen land and resource authorities given such personnel.

Tian stressed that anyone, no matter whether they are high-ranking officials or ordinary citizens, will face punishment for infringement of the programme regulations, that there can be no exceptions.

At the same time, the ministry has kicked off a series of lectures on land and resource related rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to prepare its officials for a more "open" situation in Tian's words.

"Although we expect no big shockwave to our work from the country's entry into the WTO, we must figure out ways to make full use of overseas resources but not to rely too much on them," he said.

"We welcome foreign co-operation, but we have to guard against the possible drain on rare and valuable mineral resources."