An official from Ministry of Environmental Protection told the media that it would open the hotline 010-12369 for environmental complaints on June 5, the World Environment Day, directly receiving complaints from local people on environmental pollution problems.

According to this official, the hotline, 010-12369, will take calls about emergency environment issues, cross-provincial pollution and other environmental issues that should be directly dealt with by the Ministry. The complaints that the local environmental protection departments have power to handle will be transferred to provincial-level environmental protection departments through the hotline system according to their administrative jurisdictions.  If local environment authorities fail to solve existing environmental problems, people are also entitled to complain through this hotline. They can also receive status updates on the progress of their complaints.

Staff from the Ministry will receive phone calls from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Monday through Friday, and calls at other times will be automatically recorded and be retrieved by the staff later. The Ministry will receive and handle all the substantial complaints, investigate all the non-compliances and give its replies to all of them.

According to this official, the people-centered principle is the starting point and end-result of environmental protection work. To actively encourage public participation and seriously handle complaints from the people directly embodied that the environmental protection departments govern for the people. How well the environmental complaints are handled is a touchstone to evaluate whether a local area enforces environmental laws and regulations, a vane to show the priority and policy orientation of environmental departments, and a yardstick to measure the environmental performance. The Ministry opens the hotline for complaints, actively promotes the establishment of the hotline across the country and enhances the efforts to handle these complaints. It is a major step to carry out the strategic arrangements of the State Council to "maintain growth, safeguard the livelihood and maintain stability". It is also a long-term approach to follow the people-centered principle, enhance public supervision, encourage public participation and safeguard the environmental rights and interests of the people. The official stressed that the opening of the hotline 010-12369 marked a new stage in the hotline work. The Ministry asked local environmental protection departments at all levels to seize the opportunity, further improve the capacity and efficiency in handling environmental complaints, seriously deal with every single complaint by the people, earnestly safeguard their environmental rights and interests, and play a more important role in maintaining social harmony and stability, promoting pollution reduction and improving the environmental quality.