BEIJING, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- China has held 1,140 officials in eight provincial-level regions accountable for environmental damage, following inspections in the summer of 2016, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said Thursday.
Of the total, 130 were department-level officials with four cases transferred to the judiciary, the MEP said in a statement.
Inspectors found and transferred 100 cases related to environmental damage to local governments, demanding further investigation, said Liu Changgen, deputy director of the national environmental inspection office.
Officials from Guangxi, Heilongjiang, Henan, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Jiangxi,Ningxia and Yunnan were publicly named, admonished, ordered to apologize and given Party or administrative punishments, or transferred to judicial authorities. Nine were investigated for criminal offences.
Henan held 227 officials accountable, more than any other region. A deputy mayor of Xinxiang city received a warning for inadequate air pollution control between 2014 and June 2016 that led to sustained deterioration of air quality in the city.
In Inner Mongolia, a deputy mayor of Bayannur city was given a major demerit and removed from his post as director of a local irrigation area for failing to stop a company from digging 333 hectares of fish ponds in a nature reserve.
In Jiangxi, a former deputy mayor of Ganzhou city received a demerit for water pollution by a rare earth mining firm.
The inspections are part of a campaign against pollution and environmental degradation as decades of growth have left the country with smog, polluted water and contaminated soil.
