Staff shortage, heavy workload delaying action on illegal structures, Hong Kong lawmakers told

A lack of manpower at the Buildings Department, coupled with sudden surges in workload due to major accidents, are to blame for why officers sometimes take more than 10 years to act against unauthorised structures, lawmakers have heard.

The department had issued a large number of removal orders in the past decade, which required a lot of effort to follow up, buildings director Hui Siu-wai told the Legislative Council’s development panel on Tuesday.

“Manpower is tight,” Hui said. “A few years ago, the department saw some loss of manpower because of the departure of contract employees.

“A few major safety incidents had also happened in the past few years. We had to allocate extra manpower to handle the emergencies.”

Notable among accidents in recent years was the 2010 collapse of a 53-year-old tenement building on Ma Tau Wai Road, To Kwa Wan, that killed four people.

Last month, the department came under Audit Commission criticism for failing to issue, as of October, removal orders on 4,522 illegal structures that had been inspected between six months and five years earlier. Guidelines stipulate an order should be issued within 180 days after an inspection.

Even in cases where the department had issued the orders, enforcement was slow as 68,134 remained unresolved – with 21 per cent outstanding for more than six years to as long as 10 years, the commission found. Compared with the huge backlog, only 8,000-odd people had been convicted since 2010.