Guangming Daily:
According to the Report on the Work of the Government of Hebei Province released at the second session of the 13th People's Congress of Hebei Province this January, a total of 20 livelihood projects will be implemented this year. Could you give an update on the progress of these projects in Hebei?
Xu Qin:
Thank you for your interest in the "two sessions" of Hebei Province. People's livelihood is their deepest concern, and this is of greatest significance in our work. The Party Committee and the government of Hebei province has always stayed true to the vision of people-centered development, and it is our due responsibility to enable the people to share the benefits of reform and development. Since last year, together with all of our cities and counties, our provincial government has put forward a total 20 key livelihood projects. In addition, more regional livelihood projects have been initiated by local city and county governments. We are always committed to ensuring and improving people's livelihood. Regarding your question, our 20 livelihood projects focus on the following four aspects:
The first focus is infrastructure and basic living situations, including the infrastructure renovation of run-down urban areas, dilapidated rural houses, outdated and overused pipelines, just to name a few. The second is improving the standard of public services, such as the service on employment, public culture, public facilities and schools in rural areas, and many others. The third is safeguarding people's basic living standards by, for example, developing community-based and at-home elderly care; financially supporting people with disabilities who are living in poverty; improving sanitation and so on. The fourth focus is the ecological environment, including adopting clean energy sources for winter heating, improving management of household refuse in rural areas, renewing the living environment in rural areas and many others. All of the abovementioned measures are closely tied to people's daily lives. Although these projects can be divided into different fields, they share a single goal, which is to improve people's well-being. People's welfare is never too trivial to address, as our Party committee and the government of Hebei province has attached great important to it, sparing no effort in the implementation of these projects. This is also our endorsement to practice General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions to "ensure and improve people's livelihood with more commitments and practical measures." Our 20 livelihood projects were approved by the secretary of Hebei Province party committee, and passed after thorough discussion by the standing committee of the provincial party committee, the government executive committee and the "two sessions" of Hebei province. During the implementation process, specific requirements, including the leading team, schedules and routes of the projects have been made in order to make sure that these projects are successfully completed.
Following are some statistics for your reference. Regarding the progress of the 20 livelihood projects in the first quarter of this year, a total of 266,000 jobs have been created, which is an increase of 11,000 jobs over the same period of last year. In run-down urban areas, 24,000 houses have been renovated, which accounts for 63.8% of the annual task. Renovations have been completed on 46,900 dilapidated rural houses, which accounts for the 95.3% of the total number. Some 2064 renovation projects in outdated neighborhoods have been launched, reaching 74% of the plan total. In terms of community-based and at-home elder care, before the end of the 2019, 90% of the subdistricts in main urban area will have at-home elder care centers. As for school-building in rural area, we have started construction of 191 small-scale schools and county-based boarding schools, the area of which covers 360,000 square meters. In health sector, the pilot management system have been fully implemented in 213 provincial modern hospitals, and will cover 50% of the province's total by the end of this year. Tangible benefits in the public culture service sector have also been brought to people of Hebei. These figures demonstrate the promising prospects of our livelihood projects' implementation in the first quarter of this year. We will further the implementation of these projects in the coming three quarters to ensure high-quality and efficient completion of the livelihood projects.
