How Hong Kong employers cut corners on safety and and hide workplace injuries
As city prepares to mark Labour Day, construction and maintenance workers talk about deadly work practices and the lengths to which companies go to avoid reporting injuries and paying accident compensation
Wong Wing-yung’s world was turned upside down a few weeks ago when news came that her father had died in an accident at work. Wong Tung-keung, a 47-year-old technician, had fallen from four metres while repairing air-conditioning pipes at L’hotel Nina in Tsuen Wan.
As Labour Department officials investigate the case, Wong Wing-yung questions whether work site safety standards were sufficiently rigorous to ensure a safe working environment.
“There wasn’t even a basic work platform,” Wong says of the scene the next day when she went to make offerings at the machine room where her father died.
There was a wooden ladder, but it was chained to the side. [My father] climbed up the pipes with his bare hands and fell to his death. I have many questions
“There was a wooden ladder, but it was chained to the side. [My father] climbed up the pipes with his bare hands and fell to his death. I have many questions, but no one could give me answers.”
Hotel owner Chinachem had appointed a contractor to undertake its air-conditioning maintenance, and, as is often the case, the work was farmed out to a subcontractor which employed her father. But none could provide any details about his death, Wong says.
She adds: “He was the breadwinner of the family. I am studying and my mother is a housewife, so we feel helpless about the future.”
The Labour Department registers more than 10,000 industrial accidents in Hong Kong each year. About 200 result in loss of life, but labour activists say the number of workplace accidents in the city is far worse and estimate the number of job-related injuries at five times the official figure.