Almost 5,000 Hong Kong buildings awaiting safety inspection, gov’t says, after another case of falling concrete
Hong Kong Free Press
Almost 5,000 ageing Hong Kong buildings are awaiting safety inspections and repairs, the government has said, promising to speed up work after another case of concrete falling from a building.
In the latest incident on Wednesday, local media reported that a 27-year-old man was hit on the head by a slab of concrete measuring more than a third of a square metre that fell from the second floor of a building on Shau Kei Wan Road. Conscious but bleeding, he was sent to Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital for treatment.
Aging buildings
A spate of falling concrete incidents – four in less than a month – have sparked concern over building safety.
Earlier this month, chunks of concrete fell from Po On Building on Mong Kok Road twice in three days, injuring a truck driver on the first occasion. Concrete fell from another industrial building last week on Tong Mi Road in Mong Kok.
The Buildings Department said in a statement the owners were arranging repairs to the 58-year-old building in Shau Kei Wan.
The Development Bureau said owners of 4,800 buildings had yet to comply with inspection and repair orders under the Mandatory Building Inspection Scheme (MBIS). And of those 4,800, MBIS notices for some 2,700 buildings had expired.
Some 1,800 of those buildings with expired notices had appointed registered inspectors but repairs had not been completed, and 900 buildings had not yet appointed inspectors.
“The government understands that some buildings that have received the notice have taken follow-up actions, but the relevant work has been delayed in recent years due to the {Covid] pandemic,” the Bureau said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the exterior walls of neglected buildings may be prone to “changes” due to recent weather conditions.
“The government will actively provide support to building owners who are willing to comply with the notice and complete the inspection and repair work as soon as possible,” the statement in Chinese read.
Failure to comply with a statutory notice to carry out repairs is punishable by a HK$50,000 fine and imprisonment for one year, with a further fine of HK$5,000 for each day that the offence continues.
The Shau Kei Wan building is one of about 1,100 old buildings covered by the “Operation Building Bright 2.0” scheme – a HK$6 billion initiative that grants owner-occupiers subsidies for inspections and repairs.
The Development Bureau said it would urge inspectors to speed up inspections and repair work. If progress was unsatisfactory without a reasonable excuse, the department may issue warnings and instigate prosecution proceedings.
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