Shanghai has surpassed its promise of doing "11 good deeds" for residents this year, such as lowering public transport fares and improving medical services, the city government announced yesterday.

It also said it would complete 67 key urban construction projects in areas including transport infrastructure, industrial upgrades for environmental purposes and public security improvements.

"The government has fulfilled and exceeded its promise made early this year to the citizens," Municipal spokeswoman Jiao Yang said yesterday.

To improve public transport, a 25-percent fare discount has been applied for bus passengers of 409 bus routes, 109 more than the government committed itself to.

The government has upgraded traffic signs and improved road conditions around primary, middle schools and kindergartens. It has also painted a universal logo on 551 school shuttle buses to make them easily identifiable.

For the old and weak people, the government has standardized 400 rural clinics, added 100 new ambulances, and conducted free optical surgery for 3,506 patients with cataracts.

It has installed household emergency call devices for 20,000 senior residents who live alone, provided home services for 135,000 seniors and opened 21 new daily care centers for the elderly.

The government has also upgraded the city's 240 recovery and activity centers for the mentally retarded.

In addition to transport and medical care, the government has created 703,000 jobs, provided training lessons for 547,000 farmers and workers, and standardized 202 wet markets. To improve safety, the government has pasted electric-recognition bars on 1.14 million tanks of liquefied cooking gas and other hazardous chemicals.

The spokeswoman said the city's infrastructure and environmental protection projects were going "smoothly."

Among them: six new tunnels across the Huangpu River are being built; a gigantic underground vehicle passage below the Bund area, the Zhongshan Road E1, has started construction; and the third phase of the Suzhou Creek clean-up project has started.

(Shanghai Daily December 27, 2007)