Firm blamed as truck hits woman

Drivers of cement trucks have warned of more traffic accidents if cement manufacturers fail to change a system they say will lead to road racing among them.

The warning came after a 73-year-old woman was knocked down by a cement truck at around 2pm yesterday as it entered a cement-mixing plant at Tin Wan.

Chan Sam-cho, a union member who has worked at the plant for more than two decades, said a new practice that distributed jobs to drivers according to the time they returned to the plant could be partly to blame for the tragedy.

'We worked on a quota system, everyone got a fixed number of trips every day, but now drivers all speed up ... in competition for more trips, and that obviously compromises public road safety,' Mr Chan said.

He said the system was introduced at the plant two years ago, but was not common industry practice.

The plant is to move to Chai Wan in a couple of days, but Southern district councillor Henry Chai Man-hon said the threat had not yet lifted.