In order to improve chemical incident response drills, on October 18, 2022, the Government issued Decree No. 82/2022/ND-CP amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 113/ 2017/ND-CP. Accordingly, there is an additional regulation: Every year, chemical facilities must organize rehearsals of chemical incident response plans built in chemical incident prevention and response measures in the presence of chemical incidents. or directed by a representative of the local specialized management agency. This is to overcome the situation of many chemical facilities after developing measures to prevent and respond to chemical incidents but do not organize incident response drills.
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Sinh, Deputy Director of the Chemical Department, Ministry of Industry and Trade, shared that the drill is an extremely important activity in the prevention and response to chemical incidents.
Currently, chemical operations generally include a chain of activities, including production and trading, storage, storage, transportation, production of products, and finally disposal. The closed chain of chemicals includes many stages, each of which has arisen situations that need to be responded to. Hazardous situations may include leakage, fire or explosion, or the release of toxic gases into the environment. When such situations arise, depending on the scale, it can have a very serious impact on property and human life.
From the local side, Mr. Hoang Anh Tuan – Deputy Director of Bac Ninh Department of Industry and Trade shared, for Bac Ninh province, right from the first day of establishing industrial parks, industrial clusters, as well as manufacturing enterprises, the Department Industry and Trade has advised Bac Ninh province and determined that chemical incident response drills are the responsibility and duty of the Industry and Trade sector.
In the industrial sector, Bac Ninh province determines, first, enterprises engaged in chemical activities including production, trading and storage, use and transportation. The Department of Industry and Trade has advised to attract businesses and establishments to participate in activities focusing on a number of industrial zones and clusters. When determining the scale of infrastructure for environmental protection, it will be more secure through an infrastructure investor than licensing operations for businesses located outside, which will be more difficult to control.
Secondly, under the management of the investor of the infrastructure of the industrial park, the concentrated industrial cluster also partly increases the awareness of the business. Every year, the Department of Industry and Trade also organizes to thoroughly understand, disseminate and propagate through conferences for almost all enterprises participating in chemical activities in the province.
Third, in order to well implement the chemical law enforcement that the Ministry has deployed to the locality, the Department of Industry and Trade determined that this is a very important thing because sometimes an incident will affect the community. communities, especially surrounding businesses, especially in terms of human health.
On this basis, the Department of Industry and Trade updated legal knowledge and advised the Provincial People’s Committee to issue a provincial plan to respond to chemical incidents. On that basis, the Department of Industry and Trade advises and promulgates regulations on management of chemical activities in the province.
Fourth, the Department of Industry and Trade advises the Provincial People’s Committee to establish a Steering Committee for chemical incident response at the provincial level, in which the Vice Chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee is the head of the steering committee, the leader of the Department of Industry and Trade is the permanent deputy. The Board has the participation of departments such as Health, Natural Resources and Environment, Public Security, Military, districts, towns, cities and a number of other branches and departments related to finance and planning.
On this basis, Bac Ninh, based on the operational regulations, operates most smoothly, ensuring that it organizes an annual chemical response drill at the provincial level. Despite being affected by the Covid pandemic, in the past 2-3 years, Bac Ninh has organized two drills to respond to chemical incidents.
“The drills in the province are highly appreciated, the scale and organization ensure safety, creating a very strong spillover. From there, “hit” on the consciousness and awareness of the heads of enterprises and establishments engaged in chemical activities. Enterprises have done very well the story is to build a plan, which is the object of planning to submit to the Ministry of Industry and Trade for approval” – Mr. Hoang Anh Tuan shared.
In particular, in Bac Ninh province, there is Samsung Group which is a large chemical user and many other units. Bac Ninh Department of Industry and Trade has a solution to control these activities through periodic inspection, annual inspection and unexpected inspection.
From a business perspective, Ms. Ha Thi Nguyet Que – Representative of Vu Hoang Chemical and Environmental Technology Co., Ltd (Dai Dong Hoang Son industrial park, Bac Ninh province) said, on the issue of disaster response drills. In case of chemical incident, the company was selected by Bac Ninh Provincial People’s Committee and Bac Ninh Department of Industry and Trade as the unit to organize a rehearsal to respond to chemical incidents throughout Bac Ninh province in 2019.
Currently, Vu Hoang Chemical and Environmental Technology Co., Ltd operates in a number of main fields, which are production and trading of chemicals for environmental industries, design and construction of environmental projects. related to wastewater treatment… Supporting this main field of activity, the enterprise has import and export activities of chemicals and many supporting service activities.
