Several ministry-level departments, including those responsible for urban-rural development, transport and health, have responded recently to issues of public concern.

Garbage classification campaign stepped up

All cities at the prefecture level and above will start work on the promotion of household garbage classification this year, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said in a notice.

The 46 cities currently involved in a household garbage classification pilot program should set up a system to classify and dispose of their household garbage by 2020, the ministry said.

By 2022, every city at the prefecture level and above should have at least one district where all household garbage is classified, and by 2025 they should have their own household garbage sorting and disposal systems.

The ministry required all the cities to come up with an action plan by the end of this year, laying out concrete measures to achieve the goals.

Public institutions, including local governments and scientific research institutions, should take the lead in implementing household garbage classification, according to the notice. Schools should strengthen education about the topic, and the cities should encourage young people to take part in the campaign.

Villages to be connected by coach lines next year

The Ministry of Transport will work to ensure all appropriate villages are connected to coach services by next year, a spokesman said at a recent news conference.

There are more than 10,000 villages in China that have not yet been reached by coaches, spokesman Wu Chungeng said.

In order to achieve the goal on schedule, the ministry will make a more detailed road map, and will work with the Ministry of Finance on a financial support mechanism to ensure that coach lines connecting the villages will operate in a sustainable way, Wu said.

It will also collect examples from regions where rural coach lines are well developed and share them with other regions.

In the past five years, the ministry has extended coach lines to more than 7,000 villages a year on average, Wu said, adding that more than 98 percent of the country’s villages are now connected by coach services.

List sets out key tasks to improve food safety

The State Council’s Food Safety Commission has laid out a series of key tasks to improve food quality and safety this year for local governments and other authorities.

The tasks include conducting risk assessment, formulating standards, reducing the use of pesticides and veterinary drugs, improving the quality of domestic-made infant formulas and guaranteeing food safety in schools, according to a list released on June 14.

Local governments and other authorities should also work to improve the quality and safety of agricultural produce, strengthen random checks for residual pesticides, veterinary drugs and heavy metals, and enhance inspections of food producers.

25,800 hotels ordered to take action on hygiene

The National Health Commission carried out a campaign to inspect the hygiene of hotels early this year that covered more than 157,000 hotels, according to a report released on June 13.

By the end of March, local health authorities had demanded more than 25,800 hotels address problems found during the inspection campaign and improve their hygiene conditions, and had carried out follow-up investigations of more than 3,400 hotels.

The commission asked local health authorities to carefully analyze the results of the inspection and strengthen coordination with other government departments to consolidate achievements.

They should also follow up and make sure hotels found to have broken the law rectify the situation. Hotels that do not improve their hygiene conditions promptly should be punished heavily according to law.

The commission also published two lists of hotels that were found to have committed several breaches of law during the campaign, and those that had violated the law more than once in the 12 months to March.