Shanghai to create 500,000 jobs

SHANGHAI: Creating more jobs, providing better care services to senior citizens and improving educational facilities for migrant workers' children, are some of the "10 practical projects" the city's municipal government hopes to complete in 2009, a top government official said yesterday.

"We are trying to offer more public service and social security to Shanghai's disadvantaged groups. When we were studying the 10 projects, people's livelihood was the main focus," Shanghai government spokesman Chen Qiwei said.

More resources will be shifted toward the rural areas and a scientific approach that features coordinated development of urban and rural areas will be adopted, he said.