Shanghai will carry out nine "good deeds" this year, the city government said on January 22.

"We collected views from residents and selected the nine projects that are closely related to their lives, aiming to solve practical problems for the locals," municipal spokeswoman Jiao Yang said.

The good deeds include creating job opportunities, upgrading social security applications and improving rural health facilities.

Officials are also to give priority to development in suburban areas, such as upgrading transport to Chongming Island and providing training for migrant workers.

For the past 20 years, Shanghai has started each new year by unveiling major projects.

This year's good deeds are:

1. Creating 500,000 job opportunities, including 100,000 for former farmers, and completing vocational skill training for 400,000 people.

2. Bringing two million residents in urban and rural areas who are non-workers into the medical insurance system.

3. Providing home services for 170,000 seniors and giving subsidies to needy elders. Opening 100 new day care centers for seniors and adding 10,000 new beds for them.

4. Upgrading transport facilities for handicapped people, and giving 60,000 discounts when they book cars.

5. Standardizing 300 rural clinics and adding 120 new ambulances. Free check-ups for 300,000 retired and poor women.

6. Installing information systems at 600 wet markets, 133 supermarkets and other markets to safeguard the safety of pork.

7. Improving the public water transport to and from Chongming Island, Changxing Island and Hengsha Island.

8. Upgrading of security equipment for primary and middle schools, and kindergartens, and completing education facilities at 60 migrant schools.

9. Pasting electric-recognition bars on one million tanks of liquefied cooking gas and other hazardous chemicals. Providing safety training for 500,000 migrant workers.