A senior Marine Department ship inspector said on Tuesday it was not his duty to inspect the missing watertight door of the ill-fated Lamma IV even though he had personally passed through the opening.
Philip Yu Kick-cheun, a senior ship inspector who conducted inspections on Lamma IV in 1996, the year after it was built, said the department was only required to inspect specific ship parts upon request from shipyards.
"After going through the files, I thought the inspection of the hull structure was completed," he told the commission of inquiry into the National Day sea tragedy.
In one inspection, he had passed through an access opening in the aft bulkhead, which was marked as being fitted with a watertight door on drawings, but he did not bring the discrepancy to anyone’s attention as it was not the subject of his inspection.
He did not agree with his colleagues who testified previously that the watertight door could have been fitted after the boat was built. He said it should have been fitted during construction.
An expert’s report heard by the commission earlier said the missing watertight door caused three compartments to flood and contributed to the speedy sinking of the vessel after its collision with the public ferry Sea Smooth off Lamma on October 1.