Air quality monitoring faces talent shortages

Beijing, Tianjin, Shaanxi, Jiangsu and other places have basically met the standard of "hardware" for site monitoring, but they are facing "shortcomings" in talents.

Some responsible comrades of the provincial and municipal environmental protection bureaus said: “In the past few years, the country’s investment in hardware capacity has been relatively large, and our fixed assets have turned up several times, but there is no one. Now, one person is responsible for several machines and is exhausted. The building of emergency capabilities is only The hardware is up to standard, personnel are temporarily drawn out part-time, and one person is doing several jobs."

The shortage of manpower is reflected in municipal, district and county environmental protection departments and grassroots monitoring stations in some regions. Some science and technology monitoring offices of the EPA of some provinces and cities have prepared 4 individuals, but the work includes the city's overall supervision of monitoring data, personnel training, monitoring capacity building, construction of monitoring stations, and verification of the effectiveness of more than 60 state-controlled enterprises online monitoring.

“The workload of the environmental protection departments has increased at a geometrical rate in recent years, but the manpower has not been significantly strengthened. Our office was established in 2003. At that time, three people were prepared and only one was added in 11 years.” Individuals can only basically deal with various kinds of business work and cannot take the initiative."

With the opening of the pace of construction of environmental monitoring three-level site, the issue of personnel renewal in district and county environmental protection departments also needs to be solved. Since 2002, the city has been recruiting professional monitors for districts and counties due to the lack of professional competence of tertiary stations. However, due to the compilation problem, the elderly do not retire and it is difficult for newcomers to supplement.

Some environmental monitoring stations in some capital cities have 10 people in charge of 19 substations, and one person manages two points. According to the "Technical Specifications for Automatic Monitoring of Ambient Air Quality", the monitoring stations will be inspected once a week and will be exhausted.

In some areas, an operation and maintenance personnel should undertake 2 to 3 sub-station operation and maintenance work. With the increase of new monitoring sites, personnel will become even more in short supply.

In Beijing, Tianjin, and Xi’an, because of the tired work and low salary, environmental protection monitoring positions are not favored by high-end professional and technical personnel.

A person in charge of an environmental monitoring station's automatic room worked for 17 years and never took annual leave. “The automatic station will release data every day for 365 days of the year. After the increased haze and weather concerns, the pressure on the workload is better, the mental pressure is very high, and there will be constant telephone calls in times of stress.”

High-strength jobs do not have high returns. A researcher at the deputy department level of the Science and Technology Supervision Office of the Environmental Protection Agency paid 4,800 yuan. "It is difficult to recruit high-end professional and technical personnel in this kind of work situation," said the researcher.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Monitoring Center increased more than 40 establishments in 2012 and has not yet been filled. "Last year, our center planned to recruit around 20 people. There are a lot of people who apply for resumes, but because of the low salary, they can't keep up with the right people," said an informed source. The person is a deputy chief and currently earns more than 4,000 yuan.

Xie Huasheng, deputy director of the Tianjin Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, said that the continuous updating of monitoring instruments requires more professional personnel to carry out operation and maintenance of the instruments. Therefore, it is urgent to introduce high-end talents who study comprehensive atmospheric pollution and instrument operation and maintenance.