• In order to fully implement the basic national policy of gender equality, protect women's rights and interests, promote the all-round development of women’s cause, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress revised the PRC Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests.
• In line with the principle of taking the people as the center, implementing the policy of putting prevention first and combining prevention with firefighting, and meeting the requirements of fire protection system reform and the development of fire protection in the new situation, the National People's Congress of Liaoning Province revised and issued the Fire Protection Regulations of Liaoning Province.
• The Provisions on the Supervision and Administration of Enterprises Implementing the Responsibility of Food Safety Subjects implements the relevant provisions of the Food Safety Law and its implementation regulations, urges enterprises to implement the responsibility of food safety subjects, strengthens the food safety responsibility of the main person in charge of enterprises, and standardizes the behavior of food safety management personnel.
• In order to achieve synergistic effect of pollution reduction and carbon emission reduction and improve the level of harmless disposal of sludge and improve resource utilization, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly gazetted the Implementation Plan of Sludge Harmless Disposal and Resource Utilization.

Labour

< PRC Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests >

Health and Safety

< Fire Prevention Regulations of Liaoning Province >

< Provisions on the Supervision and Administration of Enterprises Implementing the Responsibility of Food Safety Subjects >

Environment

< Implementation Plan for Sludge Harmless Disposal and Resource Utilization >

Labour

1. < PRC Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests > (2023-01-01)

PRC Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests was revised and adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on 30^th October 2022, and it will come into force on 1^st January 2023. The chapter structure of the new law has been changed from 61 articles in 9 chapters to 86 articles in 10 chapters.

The main impact on labor and employment:

• In terms of sexual harassment, the new law defines sexual harassment, stipulates that employers shall formulate rules and regulations of prohibiting sexual harassment, set up complaint channels, protect the privacy and personal information of women victims, and support and assist women victims to safeguard their rights according to law. Through these practical measures, employers are urged to pay attention to women's rights and interests, which is conducive to preventing and stopping sexual harassment against women.
• In terms of gender discrimination, the new law clarifies the specific situations of gender discrimination in employment, especially clarifies the prohibited behavior of the employer in the process of recruitment, improves the mechanism for eliminating gender discrimination in employment. In addition, it also stipulates the relevant responsibilities of employers related to the protection of the rights and interests of female employees, and specifies that labor (employment) contracts or service agreements shall include relevant contents of the protection of the rights and interests of female employees.

Health and Safety

1. < Fire Prevention Regulations of Liaoning Province > (2022-11-09)

The Fire Prevention Regulations of Liaoning Province (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations) was revised at the 35^th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13^th People's Congress of Liaoning Province and has come into force on 9^th November 2022. The main amendments to the Regulations are as follows:

1. The Regulations clarifies the legal status of fire safety committees at all levels in the province, clarifies the legal responsibilities of housing construction, public security, fire rescue institutions and other departments, and highlights the special responsibilities of key fire safety units, high fire risk units, property service providers and construction, working unit, supervision unit and other units.
2. The Regulations strengthens systematic prevention from multiple dimensions, such as maintenance and management of existing and under construction systems, combining with urban renewal governance, which is against the fire risks of external thermal insulation systems of buildings with Liaoning regional characteristics.
3. The Regulations specifies that the public security police stations shall undertake the legal responsibilities of daily fire supervision and inspection according to the relevant provisions of the Ministry of Public Security.
4. The Regulations encourages key fire safety units to promote the application of fire remote monitoring, electrical fire monitoring, Internet of Things technology and other fire safety precautions.

2. < Provisions on the Supervision and Administration of Enterprises Implementing the Responsibility of Food Safety Subjects > (2022-11-01)

The Provisions on the Supervision and Administration of Enterprises Implementing the Responsibilities of Food Safety Subjects (hereinafter referred to as the Provisions) was promulgated by the State Administration for Market Regulation on 22^nd September 2022 and has come into force on 1^st November 2022. The main contents of the Provisions are as follows:

1. The Provisions requires improving the enterprises responsibility system. Food production and operation enterprises shall establish and improve the food safety management system, implement the food safety responsibility system, and food production and operation enterprises with a certain scale shall be equipped with food safety directors while equipped with food safety officers according to law; establish a food safety responsibility system in which the main person in charge of the enterprise takes the overall responsibility and the food safety director and food safety officer take responsibility at different levels.
2. The Provisions requires improving the risk prevention and control mechanism. Enterprises shall establish a dynamic management mechanism based on food safety risk prevention and control, formulate a food safety risk control list, and establish and improve the daily control, weekly inspection, and monthly scheduling mechanisms.
3. The Provisions requires to specify the safeguard measures for performance of duties. Enterprises shall support and guarantee that food safety directors and food safety officers to carry out food safety management according to law.
4. The Provisions requires improving relevant legal liabilities. The legal responsibility of the enterprise for failing to implement the food safety responsibility system and failing to equip with, train and assess the food safety director and food safety officer as required shall be clarified according to the law.

Environment

1. < Implementation Plan for Sludge Harmless Disposal and Resource Utilization > (2022-09-22)

The Implementation Plan of Sludge Harmless Disposal and Resource Utilization (hereinafter referred to as the Implementation Plan) has been gazetted jointly by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment on 22^nd September 2022, aiming to improve the sludge harmless disposal and resource utilization.

Key goals of the Implementation Plan:

• By 2025, the scale of daily capacity of new harmless sludge (wet sludge with 80% moisture content) disposal facilities nationwide will be at or above 20,000 tons, the harmless disposal rate of municipal sludge will reach more than 90%, and that of prefecture-level and above cities will reach more than 95%, basically forming a sludge treatment system with complete facilities, safe operations, green and low-carbon models, and effective supervision. 
  Land use of sludge will be effectively promoted. The proportion of municipal sludge landfill be decreased significantly in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Economic Belt, cities and counties in the eastern region, and cities along the main stream of the Yellow River. The harmless disposal and resource utilization of sludge in county and administrative towns will be significantly improved.

Seven (7) tasks of the Implementation Plan:

• Standardize the sludge disposal method and choose the sludge disposal path and technical route reasonably according to local conditions.
• Actively promote the land use of sludge, encourage sludge that meets the standards to be used as fertilizer or soil amendment for afforestation, garden construction, abandoned mines and non-agricultural saline-alkali land and desertification land.
• Reasonably reduce the scale of sludge landfill, especially in cities in eastern China, large and medium-sized cities in central and western China and cities with conditions in other areas, gradually limit landfill disposal and actively adopt alternatives such as resource utilization.
• Promote sludge incineration treatment in an orderly manner, encourage qualified cities to build centralized sludge incineration treatment facilities, and carry out collaborative sludge incineration disposal according to local conditions.
• Promote the recycling and utilization of energy and material, encourage adopt composting process to recover and utilize nutrients, incineration ash for building materials, sewage source heat pump technology and biogas cogeneration technology, "photovoltaic +" mode, and actively build green and low-carbon benchmarking plant for sewage treatment.
• Improve the efficiency of existing facilities, establish and improve a sound system for the survey and filing of facilities, timely carry out upgrading and reconstruction, and encourage the construction of sludge reduction and stabilization treatment facilities when upgrading and expanding sewage treatment facilities.
• Accelerate the construction and renovation of sewage collection network; If the sludge treatment capacity is insufficient, accelerate the completion of the facility gap; encourage the co-construction and sharing of treatment facilities and sludge treatment facilities to be incorporated into Venous industrial parks.

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