Zhang Qian

zhqcindy@163.com

A FORUM on volunteer river chiefs will be held in Shenzhen on June 5 to better incorporate the general public’s efforts in the treatment of water, the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League of China announced yesterday.

The forum will summon government officials, experts on water affairs, enterprises, social organizations, volunteers and media outlets to jointly discuss possible volunteer work that can assist the government’s mission to treat polluted water.

“Treating polluted water has been a major work for the Shenzhen government over the past few years, and the city is also well-known for its huge base of volunteers, so we are attempting to find possible ways for volunteers to join the water treatment effort through the forum,” said Party chief of the Shenzhen Communist Youth League, Liu Guangyang.

Volunteering is an essential part of the Shenzhen Communist Youth League’s work, so the Youth League is joining hands with the China River Chief Think Tank Research Institute, the Shenzhen Municipal Water Affairs Bureau and Shenzhen’s environment commission to host China’s first forum on volunteer river chiefs.

According to Liu, the forum is expected to create communication platforms through which experts in the field can talk with and provide professional guidance to volunteers who are keen on helping with water treatment.

“Treating polluted water is not a job that can be done in a short time, so we hope the general public can understand more about what the government has been doing and what are some of the tasks lying ahead,” said Liu.

The forum will take place at the Shenzhen Youth Square located in Futian District on June 5, World Environment Day. Experts from China, as well as other countries and regions, will be invited to the forum to share their professional knowledge on the treatment of polluted water.

The River Chief System was enacted nationwide as a mechanism for supervising efforts on treating polluted rivers, lakes and seas in China at the end of 2016.

The Party chief of Shenzhen, Wang Weizhong, is the General River Chief of the city, taking responsibility for the efforts to treat the polluted rivers in Shenzhen.

Apart from government officials, many volunteers from all walks of life in Shenzhen have committed themselves to water treatment. In 2017, the first batch of 78 volunteer river chiefs was inaugurated in Shenzhen. The city now has a total of 1.6 million registered volunteers.

The city will invest 33.6 billion yuan (US$5.26 billion) in water treatment in 2018, nearly doubling the investment in 2017, said Ji Yapeng, an official from Shenzhen’s water affairs bureau, at yesterday’s media conference.

Lun Xifan from the city’s environment commission also spoke at the media conference yesterday and said that although the city already has a large sum invested in treating water, there is still a lot of work to be done.

Shenzhen has already built 3,000 kilometers of sewage pipelines over the past few years and still needs to build another 2,300 kilometers. Also, the water treatment plants scattered around the city need to be further expanded, according to Lun.

“The work is going to take another few years, and we believe that it will be great if all parts of society could take part in the water treatment projects,” said Lun.