Tai Po fire probe: no evidence of smoking found despite stepped up inspections

Occupational safety officer says Labour Department increased inspections due to complaints, but workers might have smoked outside of them anyway

Hong Kong labour authorities’ handling of Wang Fuk Court residents’ complaints and inspections at the renovation site before the estate was engulfed in an inferno last November will be scrutinised by the independent committee on the 16th day of its evidential hearing.

Officers from the Labour Department are scheduled to testify on Tuesday before the judge-led panel, which is tasked with investigating the city’s deadliest fire since 1948.

The first witness to testify was Lam Sau-ching, an occupational safety officer. She said the department stepped up inspections in response to numerous complaints by residents, while conceding that workers might have smoked on site when there were no inspections.

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.

More from our coverage:

• Seeking answers to a tragedy Hong Kong could have avoided
• Tai Po fire probe: member alleges rigged proxy votes in management committee election – as it happened
• Tai Po fire: owners’ group repeatedly protested against use of flammable materials