Degradation of environmental departments betrays promises

THE MINISTRY OF ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT has found the environmental protection bureau of Linfen, a city in North China's Shanxi province, plugged or sprayed water on the sampling heads of the air quality monitoring equipment in the city nearly 100 times from April last year to March this year so as to sweeten the air monitoring results. Beijing News comments:

According to the rules made by the central government, local government heads should be punished if the air quality deteriorates. It seems the heads of the environmental watchdog of Linfen decided falsifying the data was the best way to help their superiors, as well as themselves.

Their methods are not new, the environmental protection departments of other cities have been caught doing the same thing, even though it is actually quite easy for such attempts to doctor the data to be spotted in the final data analysis according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.