China's top legislator on Friday called on the media to increase supervision over energy consumption and pollutant emissions to assist the authorities' efforts to control pollution.

Wu Bangguo, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, said the media should play a role in arousing the public's awareness of energy-saving and exposing problems and irregularities.

Wu was speaking to journalists from the state media who are expected to report on a nationwide environmental protection supervision tour.

The top legislator urged "in-depth reports" on the issues that most concern the public and ones that receive the most complaints.

The annual media supervision campaign, dubbed the All-China Environmental Protection Century Tour, was first launched in 1993 with participants from 28 media including the People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television.

Between 2003 and 2006, the campaign organized nearly 300 journalists to tour around the country. About 1,200 new reports were filed.

The campaign sets a different theme for every year and will, for 2007, focus on reducing energy consumption and pollutant emissions, the targets that the central government admitted they failed to meet in the past year.

In the government work report delivered at last year's annual parliamentary full session, Premier Wen Jiabao said the goal of cutting energy consumption per unit GDP by 20 percent in the five-year period from 2006 to 2010. The goal for 2006 was four percent.

However, in March, the National Bureau of Statistics reported China's per unit GDP energy consumption fell 1.23 percent in 2006.

Despite the failure, Wen said the "serious" five-year target of energy consumption reduction will not be changed, and the government will try every means to reach the goal.

Slow industrial restructuring and over-heated growth of the heavy industry, especially the highly energy-consuming and polluting sectors, were to blame, according to experts and government officials.

Lots of outdated production facilities are still in operation. Meanwhile, some local governments and companies failed to strictly comply with laws, regulations and standards on energy saving and environmental protection, they said.

Source: Xinhua