Brazen scavengers target building security gates

First manhole covers and gratings disappeared, then traffic and road signs. Even metal strips from outside MTR stations went missing. Now building security gates are the target of scrap-metal scavengers, who can get HK$420, at most, for them.

Police are warning residents that old buildings without security guards and surveillance cameras could be targeted after six cases were reported in Mong Kok yesterday.

Crime squad officers were first called to 33 Fa Yuen Street at about 11.15am yesterday when resident Ho Pang, 79, said the entrance gate of the nine-storey building he lives in had been stolen. He shares a sixth-floor flat with his wife. She said she discovered the metal gate was missing when they left the building at about 9am on Saturday. They stayed in Lam Tin over the weekend and returned yesterday.

'I'm afraid for my safety. Without the gate, bad people are now free to go in and out of the building,' she said, adding it would be a cautious wait for a new gate to be installed. She also urged police to step up patrols.

Fifty metres away, police discovered the metal gates from the front and rear entrances to the Pak Cheung Building had also been stolen.

A housewife who lives in a flat on the building's second floor with her husband and three daughters was worried. 'If they can steal the security gates, they can easily break into our flats. Police need to increase patrols in the area,' she said.

Her husband, Hang Ka-ho, said he did not realise the gate had been stolen when the South China Morning Post approached him yesterday afternoon. 'The front gate was always kept open for customers of the first-floor guest house. The gate was still there on Sunday,' he said.