Last year saw few scandals as big as the monosodium glutamate producer Vedan Viet Nam being uncovered. Does this mean environment police did not launch a large-scale attack as in previous years?

Although more than 5,500 violation cases have been uncovered over the past three years, only 94 cases involving 130 people have been processed.

Environment police also seized 118 Indian cobras, two pythons and a wildcat from a wildlife trafficker in the northern province of Phu Tho.

Besides this, we also helped functional offices prevent crimes while recommending amendments and supplements to many legal documents, paving the way for the department to operate.

What difficulties is Viet Nam facing in terms of environment issues?

Environment police are allowed to apply special investigative methods in accordance with the law, so we’re able to be more efficient.

However, not everyone understands the importance of environment police and their responsibility in protecting the environment. The situation is forcing the department to cope with particular difficulties because its juridical capacity is limited.

Many offices still have overlapping responsibilities. For example, the Market Control Unit and food inspectors are in charge of food hygiene and safety, and recently, the Department of Environment Police has been assigned to inspect violations on food hygiene and safety.

However. the department faces difficulties because the law has not yet regulated the inspection jurisdiction of environment police over the issue.

In terms of administrative fines for food hygiene and safety violations, the law says it comes within the competence of many functional offices to impose fines. This has led to different interpretations of the rules between agencies, or missing out of fines which should have been imposed on violators.

In addition, there’s been either replication of inspections, or the absence of co-ordination and support among these agencies.

Environment police have brought violators to the court, but it hasn’t seemed easy to process criminal cases, is this true?

That’s right. There are numerous difficulties. It was the case with Vedan Viet Nam, for example. In the beginning, the department thought the evidence we had was enough to prosecute the case.

But it turned out that after discussing it with the People’s Procuracy, the People’s Court and collating the case with the existing Criminal Law, that under Article 183 of the law, it was impossible to bring criminal charges against the Vedan company, only its leaders as individuals.

However, there was not enough evidence to prove that these individuals had instructed the illegal discharging of untreated water into the Thi Vai River. We are all aware of serious damage being done to the environment. But it is not easy to process cases under the current law.

Many barriers exist in law, in policies and in coordination between agencies. All these should be taken into account before opening criminal investigations. Processing the cases can’t be resolved overnight.

For these reasons, although more than 5,500 violation cases have been uncovered over the past three years, only 94 cases involving 130 people have been processed.

Much remains to be done in terms of environmental protection, and there’s the added affects of climate change. What needs to be done?

Environment police can only strive to prevent violations in environmental protection. In my opinion, it is important to improve people’s awareness about environmental protection and energy saving. Besides this, it is also essential to raise awareness among decision makers about environmental protection.

That’s not right. The department uncovered four times more violations last year than in previous years. We discovered 23 member companies of Electricity of Viet Nam illegally selling more than 564,000 litres of oil discharged from transformers to the market, a toxic substance that may cause cancer.