Drain covers on four streets in Kaohsiung’s Desheng Borough (德生) have been decorated with images of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), prompting accusations that Desheng Warden Wu San-hsiung (吳三雄) was “sucking up.”
The Kaohsiung City Government on May 4 said it hoped that likenesses of the mayor on city documents would use the image promoted by the Kaohsiung Bureau of Information.
Wu denied that replacing the covers with ones featuring the bureau’s image of Han was done to please the mayor.
Photo: Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
Residents said that the new covers, which have smaller openings to allow space for graphics, would inhibit drainage during torrential rainfall.
One resident said they wondered whether Wu, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member, felt compelled to “suck up” to Han to secure funds for borough projects.
Another resident joked that perhaps the DPP was hoping to nominate the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Han as its candidate for next year’s presidential elections.
Others said that the covers were an eyesore, with pink and gold-colored ones within 5m of each other being “gaudy.”
Gold was chosen as the color to conform with Han’s “get rich” slogan, Wu said.
As a DPP member, it was impossible that he was “sucking up” to Han, he said.
The borough has been experimenting with drain covers, as the area has been affected by dengue fever, the city government said, adding that it has yet to standardize a design.
It has investigated using drains that are odor-repellent to keep mosquitoes away, it said.
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