The State Environment Protection Administration (SEPA) of China vowed recently to tackle the serious environmental problems that may trigger mass protests over pollution.

Mass protests of such kind have been on the rise in recent years, increasing at a rate of almost 30 percent a year, and they often occurred in economically developed regions, Zhou Shengxian, head of the SEPA, was quoted by the China Daily as saying.

The newspaper reported on Thursday that more than 50,000 disputes over environmental pollution occurred in 2005, and 97.1 percent of all environmental mishaps involved the release of pollution.

Water contamination made up 50.6 percent of the total accidents. Almost 40 percent of environmental accidents involved air pollution. The accidents collectively caused up to 105 million yuan (about 13.1 million U.S. dollars) in direct economic losses, said the newspaper.

"This environmental problem has become one of the main factors that affect national safety and social stability," said Pan Yue, deputy director of the SEPA.

Zhang Lijun, another deputy director of the SEPA, said the administration had an annual increase of 30 percent of environmental complaints, with more than 90 percent requiring SEPA's help to get rid of the problems, Zhang said.

Zhang called for a more timely and effective response to people's complaints to prevent them from escalating into mass protests.

Zhang said that some local officials are sheltering local companies, which discharge heavy pollutants, because they have shares in them.

"We have heard many complaints saying: no clean official, no clean water," Zhang said.

In the middle of last month, Chen Changzhi, vice-minister of the Ministry of Supervision, said they would join hands with the SEPA to crack down on corruption that may be behind the ineffective closure of companies that discharge heavy pollutants.

Source: Xinhua