The Ministry of Emergency Management ("MEM") has recently formulated and released the Guide to Grading Enterprises Manufacturing and Storing Hazardous Chemicals Based on Diagnosis and Assessment of Safety Risks (for Trial Implementation) (the "Guide").
The Guide is comprised of nine categories, including the "intrinsic dangers", "surrounding environment", "design and evaluation", "equipment", "automatic control and safety facilities", "personnel qualification" and "safety management systems". Under each category, several items are outlined together with the corresponding points, what aspects will be assessed is also made clear, and a blank is set aside for each aspect to provide the penalty points. According to the Guide, the diagnosis and assessment, based on the 100-point system, classifies, according to results of the diagnosis and assessment, hazardous chemical enterprises within each jurisdiction in a risk-descending order into four grades, namely, Grade Red (below 60 points), Grade Orange (60 points or above but below 75 points), Grade Yellow (75 points or above but below 90 points) and Grade Blue (90 points or above). An enterprise may be directly classified as Grade Red, if it falls under any of four given circumstances, such as "where chemical facilities in service are not designed in a standard way and have not been diagnosed for the design safety". Moreover, the Guide clearly specifies that the grading-based diagnosis and evaluation of safety risks facing hazardous chemical enterprises shall be subject to the dynamic administration and will be adjusted once every three years in principle.