Hard to enforce fire safety even under amended laws: Tai Po probe committee chairman - as it happened
Labour Department found that no workers smoked on site, safety officer says, suggesting that those repeatedly seen smoking eluded inspections
Hong Kong labour authorities’ handling of Wang Fuk Court residents’ complaints and inspections at the renovation site were scrutinised by the independent committee on the 16th day of its evidential hearing.
Officers from the Labour Department testified on Tuesday before the judge-led panel investigating the fire that engulfed all but one of the estate’s eight blocks on November 26 last year. It was the city’s deadliest blaze since 1948.
Lam Sau-ching, an occupational safety officer, said the department stepped up inspections in response to complaints by residents, but found no evidence of construction workers smoking on site. She conceded that they might have done so on other occasions.
Other residents previously testified that they had seen workers smoking on site on multiple occasions, suggesting that smokers had simply eluded inspectors when they arrived to make checks.
Li Man-pong, a senior divisional occupational safety officer, told the committee that occupational safety laws did not allow workers to climb on scaffolding, and movable boards installed on the estate’s emergency staircases were meant to facilitate their entry and exit.
His remarks prompted the committee’s chairman Justice David Lok Kai-hong to ask: “Then in this case, would you say the interests of workers and those of occupants are contradictory? This is a serious problem.”
Lok later pointed out that the burden of proof on authorities would remain heavy, even under proposed amended laws to improve oversight of contractors’ safety standards.
The fire in Tai Po, which killed 168 people and displacing about 5,000 residents, occurred while the estate was undergoing renovation work, with allegedly non-fire-retardant scaffolding mesh and flammable styrofoam boards being used at the site.
Workers’ smoking habits were also identified by the committee’s lead counsel, Victor Dawes, as one of the “human factors” that contributed to the tragedy.
The committee was told in previous hearings that residents had repeatedly flagged their concerns over scaffolding mesh, styrofoam boards and workers’ smoking to government departments, but authorities allegedly failed to respond to their complaints effectively.
Kong Cheung-fat, a member of the management committee of the owners’ corporation for the estate at the time of the fire, told the hearing on Monday that he and other residents had sent multiple emails to complain about safety concerns, but authorities “did not fulfil their duties seriously”.
Kong also conceded that, despite pointing to alleged abuse of proxy votes in polls concerning major decisions as a long-standing problem, the management committee had not taken concrete measures to tackle the problem.
Follow our latest coverage of the hearing.
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