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Cliff Buddle

IT was known as the heavenly ladder, a mesh cage which seemed to carry men into the clouds. But for the victims of the Java Road construction site disaster, the passenger hoist was to become a death trap.

   Shocking disregard for safety regulations and negligent working practices led to the lift being left to operate in a deadly condition. Four men and a firm were put on trial for manslaughter.

  But, yesterday, Mr Justice Duffy told jurors they might feel there were many others not in the dock who should bear some responsibility for the disaster.

   A string of prosecution witnesses, including directors of companies involved in the building project, were accused of being ignorant of safety regulations, failing to instruct staff properly, leaving innocent employees to take the blame and even attempting to pervert the course of justice.

  'You are not here to wonder at or comment upon the Attorney-General's decision to prosecute some and not others . . . the factors the Attorney-General must weigh in the balance when deciding on prosecutions are many and various,' the judge told the panel.

   Former director of public prosecutions John Wood made the final decision on whom to put in the dock after examining evidence with a team of high-powered barristers.

  Police Superintendent Don Logan said it would have been difficult to prosecute company directors because they were too far removed for gross negligence to be proved.

  Tragedy struck at 4.15 pm on June 2, 1993, as the workers were returning to their duties after a tea break.

  The lift took 12 men as high as the 20th floor. Suddenly, there was a click and the cage fell at 88 km/h before crashing in a mangled heap into a third-floor podium.

  Prosecutor Gary Plowman QC said the lift had collapsed because of the appalling state of its pinion. The emergency brake had failed to stop it falling.

  The Tokyo-based Aoki Corporation won the $267 million contract to construct the new Hong Kong and China Gas operations centre at North Point.

  The firm was fined $70,000 in March last year, when it pleaded guilty to eight summonses alleging breaches of safety regulations. No Aoki employee was charged with manslaughter.

  Project manager Hideaki Shimarmori was 'thoroughly ignorant' of the safety rules, the jury heard. He admitted he did not know whether Aoki was able to delegate its responsibility for safety to sub-contractors.

  Mr Shimarmori said Aoki had slashed its profits when tendering to win the contract.

  It sub-contracted the project to Donson Construction, which was responsible for the management of all site activities. Donson was not prosecuted.

  A Donson director, Tsui Heng-sum, told the court the lift had originally been installed for VIPs to attend a topping-out ceremony. He later changed his account and said the lift was 'for everyone'.

  Work began on the site in February 1992. Tam Ping-cheong was employed as the safety supervisor. The British-made Wickham P-310 lift was installed a year later.

  Donson hired the hoist from D and N Engineering and Equipment.

  It was assembled at the company's warehouse by technician Kwong Tim-yau before being delivered to the site.

  Mr Justice Duffy described D and N as being 'more interested in dollars than safety'. He suggested that five other badly worn pinions found at its warehouse might have been intended for lifts at other sites.

  D and N was responsible for carrying out routine maintenance of the hoist. This was supposed to be done on a weekly basis by Kwong and fellow technician Hui King-leung.

  But, in practice, the checks tended to be conducted only when the technicians were called out to make repairs.

  D and N director Mark Ng Tat-chun was faced with allegations that he had put an innocent employee - Mr Hui - in the dock by persuading him to lie to police officers.

   Mr Hui's barrister, Simon Westbrook, suggested Mr Ng had been desperate to conceal his company's failure to make regular safety checks on the lift and had begged Mr Hui to cover this up.

  Mr Hui was freed when the prosecution offered no evidence against him, soon after Mr Ng completed his evidence. D and N was not prosecuted.

  Another defendant to be cleared before the end of the evidence, Wong Hon-sang, claimed he had been made a scapegoat.

  Mr Wong was employed as an assistant examiner by Ajax Engineers and Surveyors, which pleaded guilty to corporate manslaughter.

  He was described in court as 'the smallest cog in the Ajax machine', yet he was the only Ajax employee to be put in the dock.

  Mr Wong was found not guilty by the jury on the directions of the judge, who said there was no case for him to answer.

  The jury was told Ajax director Lo Kin-wing had tried to hide evidence of the company's negligence.

   Ajax's construction sites department manager, Chan Wong, said Mr Lo had phoned him from Australia in the weeks after the lift collapse and told him to enter false information in the company order book.

  Mr Lo refused to answer questions about this in court after Mr Justice Duffy told him he need not say anything which might incriminate him.

  Mr Chan testified he was told to enter the name of a qualified Ajax engineer, Tsui Pan, into the book to make it look as though Mr Tsui had inspected the lift a week before the accident.

  The witness said it was company policy for Mr Tsui to sign safety certificates for equipment which he had not inspected. Instead, the checks were carried out by poorly trained assistants like Mr Wong.

  Mr Tsui was charged with breaching safety regulations but was given immunity when he agreed to give evidence for the prosecution.



The heavenly ladder that led to death