Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation ("SAMR") and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment ("MEE") have jointly issued the Supplementary Requirements for the Qualification Accreditation of Inspection and Testing Agencies and the Examination of Ecological Environment Monitoring Agencies (the "Supplementary Requirements"), with effect from May 1, 2019.
The Supplementary Requirements state that, an ecological environment monitoring agency shall staff itself with the required number of personnel and ensure their expertise background, work experience, monitoring capacities and so on, match the monitoring activities they will conduct, adding that personnel holding medium-grade professional titles or above or having the equivalent capabilities shall represent at least 15 percent of the total of staff members participating in ecological environment monitoring. In addition, the Supplementary Requirements note that, an ecological environment monitoring agency may place effective control over documents in a paper-based or electronic manner. Meanwhile, quality control practices of an ecological environment monitoring agency shall cover the whole process of its ecological environment monitoring activities, and the quality control measures it adopts shall satisfy requirements set out in relevant monitoring standards and technical specifications, so as to ensure the accuracy of monitoring results.