China's environmental watchdog decided to initiate a nationwide rectification of the rule-bending acts by some companies when carrying out environmental impact assessment (EIA) projects, which has sparked waves of complaints about the adverse effects rendered by their malpractices.

The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) promised to adopt more efforts to enhance its management of EIA companies after announcing a notice which required a Beijing based company to introduce fresh measures to get itself qualified or, otherwise, be closed.

Despite repeated orders from SEPA, there remain a bunch of EIA companies displaying obvious lack of sense of responsibility and yielded low-quality products, said a SEPA official.

SEPA said it will wash out all the unqualified EIA bodies through carrying out an overall check in the EIA sector and re-issuing EIA business certificates.

At the same time, it will impose strict qualification on EIA market access to prevent unqualified companies from going into the market and put up special credit records for EIA institutions.

According to SEPA, it's also necessary to give the heads of EIA institutions training courses so as to raise their operational capability and fully realize the liabilities they should be pursued for unqualified work.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2005)