Railway irregularities intolerable
In a decisive move that shows the government’s commitment to public safety, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuetngor announced on Thursday that the scope of investigation of the commission of inquiry into subpar construction work at the Hung Hom Station on the Sha Tin-Central Link rail line will be expanded to cover the two approach tunnels and a set of secondary tracks. These were found to have unapproved design changes and missing building records. Chaired by retired judge Michael Hartmann, the commission was set up after unauthorized changes were found in many parts of the station’s concrete structure.
The commission will determine what measures should be taken to remove any potential threat to public safety after thorough inspections reveal whether the unauthorized changes have indeed compromised the structural integrity of those parts of the concrete structure. Although that means the opening of the Sha Tin-Central Link would be delayed yet again, we believe the SAR government made the right decision — better to be safe than sorry.
Suffice to say the Mass Transit Railway Corporation, the sole operator of all railways except the tram service in Hong Kong, must take full responsibility for failing to prevent such mistakes from happening in the first place and making the situation worse with more blunders afterward. Of course the contractors who made those structural changes without permission and MTRC supervisors suspected of negligence must be dealt with according to relevant laws. When future passengers’ safety is at stake, everything else can wait until the threats are removed by qualified contractors according to construction rules.
The scandal also tells us it is high time the MTRC gave its supervision and regulation mechanism on railway construction projects an overhaul, including the reeducation of all staff members in charge of construction work supervision and quality inspection, to ensure all work is performed strictly by the rule book as well as engineering drawings. Considering the huge loss of public funds and precious time caused by construction irregularities and all the efforts to clean up the mess, some form of punishment on the corporate hierarchy from top to bottom is necessary to let the public know the MTRC won’t make such mistakes ever again and that people can still trust the railway operator with their lives, in a manner of speaking.
Whenever an engineering misconduct of this nature is exposed, the public automatically demand a full account of what actually happened, how bad a threat it poses to public safety, which party is responsible and any remedial measure to eliminate it, so as to restore public confidence in Hong Kong’s rule of law in addition to the moral integrity of the corporate world as a whole. The scandal shows a serious lack of corporate transparency over disciplinary matters like quality control, effective supervision and reliable chain of command. This must end now.