According to the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, unemployment in Kaohsiung reached 5.5 percent in August, indicating that there are 33,000 unemployed people in the city.
Huang vowed to create 4,000 job opportunities annually to reduce the unemployment rate to 4 percent.
To further enhance the quality of life, Huang said he had sound proposals for fighting dengue fever.
Meanwhile, independent candidate Chang Po-ya (
"The number of stations in the city where people can buy clean water [outside of their homes] has tripled over the past four years," Chang said, implying that under Hsieh's leadership, residents didn't even have access to good quality tap water.
Yesterday, during the second televised debate, Chang addressed the water issue again, saying that replacing at least 10 percent of old aqueducts monthly would be crucial to upgrading the city's water quality.
Responding to his opponents' criticism, Hsieh said the quality of life in Kaohsiung had increased since he became mayor.
"Our policies make mounds of household garbage disappear, TV cables get buried underground and more than 100 hectares of park space available," Hsieh said.
Hsieh said while only 6 percent of the city's households were connnected to the city's sewer system four years ago, 25 percent are connected now.
"If I ran the government like a passing visitor, this project -- which will benefit future generations -- would not have been carried out," Hsieh said.
Lin Yun-chien (
According to Lin, both a NT$1.65 billion budget allocated by the Cabinet for channeling cleaner water from the Kaoping River (高屏溪) and a NT$8 billion budget allocated for building a new water treatment plant were frozen after former mayor Wu Den-yi (吳敦義) of the KMT lost the election in 1998.
"But now the city government run by the DPP has allocated NT$15 billion to carry out these projects to improve the quality of life," Lin said.
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