(Reuters) – China’s environment ministry said on Wednesday it would soon dispatch seven teams of inspectors to five Chinese provinces and two state-run metal firms in the central government’s latest round of environmental audits.
Teams will be stationed in Jilin, Shandong, Hubei, Guangdong and Sichuan, as well as at China National Gold Group Corp and China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group Co (CNMC), the Ministry of Ecology of Environment said in a statement.
“It is necessary to carefully verify, resolutely rectify and effectively solve the prominent ecological and environmental problems reported by the masses,” the ministry said, without giving a timeframe for the inspections.
Industrial Shandong is China’s top aluminium-producing province, while gold miner China National Gold and CNMC – best known for investing in mining projects overseas – both have copper-smelting units in the country.
(Reporting by Tom Daly; editing by Jason Neely)
