The Vietnamese News Agency reports that Ho Chi Minh City has approved a master plan for solid waste management in the city.

The master plan will help deal with problems involving solid waste management and is designed to call for public participation in environmental protection, said Nguyen Van Chien, deputy director of the municipal Natural Resources and Environment department.

Eleven programmes for closely monitoring waste discharged from industrial manufacturers, hospitals and households will be worked out in the 2004-2005 period and implemented until 2010.

To collect solid waste and set up disposal sites, an inspection will be undertaken at 800 factories and 23,000 smaller production units, 12 industrial parks, three export processing zones and a hi-tech park. Fifty-nine hospitals, 400 healthcare stations, 5,140 private clinics and 6,970 drug stores will be checked as well to see how they are managing their solid waste.

What must be done this year under the master plan is to build waste treatment facilities and to select suitable technologies for waste collection, classification, transport and recycling, Chien said. Five programmes under the master plan will require some 9 billion VND (US$0.6 million). The city's environmental protection strategy in the decade is estimated to need some 2 trillion VND (US$127 million).