After one year in office, Lai Feng-Wei inspected governance highlights
Penghu County Government
2019-12-23
471
-
To mark the first anniversary of serving as the Penghu County Magistrate, Lai Fen-Wei held a press conference on January 23 to give a county governance debriefing. Lai stated that since his inauguration, he had been regulating traffic, improving the smoke exhaust of BBQ restaurants, gradually building the trust between people and the government, while putting in extensive measures to clean up marine debris, promulgating a greener environment and placing much emphasis on education. In future the county government will continue to pursue excellence and restore glory.
At the one-year anniversary press conference, Lai Feng-Wei arranged for all his highest-level officials to step out of their offices and invited all media to visit the county governance highlights. The first visit was at the QingQing Grass Park that was transformed from old dormitories in LiZhi 2nd Village, followed by a trip to the QingQing Community independently built by ChengGong Community residents.
Lai Wei-Feng said that “To build a community of books, trees and fragrant grass” is his governance focus. For a more beautified environment, the “QingQing Grass Park” has progressed to “QingQing Community”. The County Government had dismantled many old dormitory buildings, grown more trees and dotted the space with many thousands of spots of grassy meadows covering a land area of 122.4 hectares. A total of 15 QingQing Communities was built, 30,000 trees planted and a forest of 6 hectares created. The goal was to have a thorough and extensive coverage of greeneries for the community.
This year in Penghu is set as the Year of Education. The County Government’s Education Department arranged for a visit to the WenGuan Junior High School community reading room. Magistrate Lei Feng-Wei said that the county government promulgates reading on grassroot levels to fill the society with books. With community reading rooms set up in 11 schools across the county, the aim was to increase the collection of books in the school library, install book storage of love, and encourage students to write and publish their writing. This year, Penghu came on top of all major cities in Taiwan on the ranking of children’s submission of articles to the Mandarin Daily News for publication, which is part of the excellent results for the Year of Education.
The climax of the county governance tour was with the Dragon-Gate Village. Very early in the morning, the Village chief Hong Rei-Da along with several dozens of village volunteers conducted a clean-up on the Dragon Gate Beach. Once Magistrate Lai arrived, Hong invited Magistrate Lai to ride the beach buggy with him and show the crowds the result of the marine debris clear-up. Lai added, “To have a task well done, tools have to be sharpened first.” Dragon Gate Village is the beach clean-up role model for the entire county. The County Government will give Dragon Gate Village NT$400,000 to subsidize the purchase of beach buggies for better efficiency in beach clean-up.
Magistrate Lai said that marine debris is a worldwide problem and the coastline filled up with floating garbage from the sea is a shocking sight indeed. The County Government encouraged the entire county residents to join the beach clean-up. So 96 villages and districts took part and 17,000 people were mobilized in the clean-up covering 220 km and clear 310 tons’ marine waste, a 7 fold increase from last year. Now the coast is so much more beautiful.
Magistrate Lai pointed out that marine debris can not only destroy the landscape but also further impact on the existence of marine organisms. The county government rolled out 12 measures for ocean revival clearing 120,000 meters of sea-bottom coverage nets, 9,538 pieces of barrier nets and completed the system of attaching fishing instruments with owner names. The construction of GuangRong and ShuanYuan Water Resources Centers has started, and is expected to complete 60% of the waste water treatment by 2020. Many millions of fish and shrimp fingerlings and sand crabs has been released into the ocean as a measure to actively revive oceanic resources.
As a gesture to thank the Dragon Gate Village volunteers for their year-long hard work in clearing marine debris, the county government held a special thanksgiving dinner while conforming to its plastics reduction policy and using only eco-friendly cutleries and cloth table covers. Magistrate Lai said that to eliminate marine waste we need to start by using less plastic products in our daily life. The county government set an example by encouraging all departments, schools and outreaching governmental agencies to use eco-friendly bottles when holding meetings, and supporting 9 caterers in the county to switch to eco-friendly tableware, and table covers. Each year 7,200 plastic table covers and 72,000 pieces of tableware can be reduced. The amount of plastic tableware reduced in one year can stack up 86 buildings of the Taipei 101.
Magistrate Lai also presented an award certificate to Hong Rei-Da and the village’s ocean volunteers, “the Red Ant Senior Club”, to thank them for all the devotion to the oceanic environment protection. Further, Lai and his highest-level officials also wrote their New Year wishes on the discarded buoys, and created a painting, “Wondrous People of Ju Island”. Lai wrote on the stamen, “No Problem”, as an encouragement for all department directors to fulfill their potential and pursue excellence so that Penghu can thrive like a flower, dazzling and glorious.
