9,578 buildings have not complied with safety orders
More than one-fifth of them located in the same district as property hit by deadly blaze this week
More than 9,500 buildings in Hong Kong have not complied with fire safety orders, with one-fifth located in the same district as a 60-year-old property hit by a deadly blaze this week, prompting calls for legislative work to be sped up to ensure old structures are safe.
The scale of non-compliance was revealed following the blaze, which killed five people and injured 43 others in Yau Ma Tei on Wednesday, with the Buildings Department disclosing yesterday that more than 60 per cent of the orders it and the fire service had issued were not observed.
The department said on Wednesday night that blaze-hit New Lucky House had failed to comply with orders to upgrade fire safety installations issued 16 years ago, a “common” problem, according to a surveying industry representative.
Kenny Tse Chi-kin, chairman of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors’ building policy panel, said scattered ownership, especially in mixed-use old buildings like New Lucky House, had made compliance with fire safety orders difficult.
“They involve both residents and business operators. It will be difficult to reach a consensus. The stores may have been affected by the economy and find it hard to pay for maintenance,” Tse said.
Under the Fire Safety (Buildings) Ordinance, both the Buildings Department and the Fire Services Department inspect target buildings, including mixeduse and residential properties built before 1987. They can issue a “fire safety direction” to building owners, ordering them to upgrade equipment to current standards.
Among the 9,578 properties that had failed to comply with fire safety orders issued by the Buildings Department as of December last year, Yau Tsim Mong district, where New Lucky House is located, had the largest number of them, 1,843.
Three other old districts – Sham Shui Po, Central and Western, and Kowloon City – had 1,267, 1,076 and 1,020 such buildings respectively.
The Buildings Department yesterday said that as of December 31, the average compliance rate for orders both it and the Fire Services Department had issued was about 37 per cent.
Buildings authorities issued around 80,000 orders, with about 26,000 resolved as of end-December. The Fire Services Department made 290,000 orders covering 10,400 buildings, and more than 110,000, or 38 per cent, had been complied with as of late March this year.
The department said anyone who, without reasonable excuse, failed to comply with an order would commit an offence and be liable to a HK$25,000 fine and a further HK$2,500 for each day the situation remained unresolved.
The government last December submitted a proposal to the legislature to amend the ordinance to allow authorities to carry out fire safety improvement work on buildings where the owners failed to comply with orders, and recover the costs from them, with a surcharge of no more than 20 per cent when completed.
Tse, the surveyor, urged authorities to speed up the bill drafting work given the tragedy in Yau Ma Tei and step up inspections at high-risk structures, such as composite buildings and stand-alone blocks.
He said the government had to set up a mandatory maintenance fund in every block so owners could save money for improvement work and tackle the issue in the long run.
Yau Tsim Mong district councillor Chris Ip Ngo-tung also urged the government to step up efforts in amending the ordinance.
He noted that some owners were willing to comply with orders but found it too costly and difficult to locate contractors, and he suggested the government provide a maintenance price list for their reference.
The Fire Services Department said its investigation had found damaged safety doors designed to prevent smoke from spreading on
The stores may have been affected by the economy and find it hard to pay for maintenance KENNY TSE, SURVEYOR
If there is anything that gives Hong Kong a bad name, subdivided flats must be one of them. The prevalence of these coffin-sized cubicles says a lot about not just the gaping wealth gap in one of the world’s most affluent cities, but also the way the issue is handled by the authorities. Despite a growing number of mishaps involving these shameful living spaces over the years, the problem is still not being tackled as expeditiously as it should.
The alarm bell rings again after a blaze in a 60-year-old tenement block in densely populated Yau Ma Tei killed five people and injured dozens of others earlier this week. While initial investigations show the fire may have been sparked by a discarded cigarette, firefighters said the some 100 subdivided units and the structural alterations inside the building made rescue more difficult.
Adding to the concern is the slack enforcement of safety rules. It was revealed that the Buildings Department had issued fire safety orders to the building concerned in 2008 and required the owners’ corporation to upgrade protection measures. These included replacing fire doors, enclosing non-emergency facilities with fire-resistant materials and providing fixed windows with fire-resistant capabilities. But while the building engaged consulting companies in 2015 and 2020 to handle the orders, and the department had followed up and sent advisory letters during the years, the orders have still not been complied with to date. Separately, the building owners were also prosecuted and issued with fire abatement notices over the years, according to the fire department.
The compliance issue at the block is not an isolated case. Currently, two departments are empowered to inspect buildings and issue owners or occupiers with fire safety compliance orders which list required improvements. But the compliance rate is low because it is up to the owners to deliberate and reach a consensus among people living in the buildings. Of the 347,715 orders issued by the departments after inspections of 10,761 buildings, only 128,351, or 36.9 per cent, had been tackled or discharged by June last year.
The government, to its credit, enacted a law two years ago to regulate rent increases and utility charges for subdivided flats. A government task force is also seeking to improve living standards by setting out the requirements for such units, which, presumably, may result in the substandard ones being outlawed eventually. As of February, there were 2,941 suspected breaches of rent and charges under the law. The problems with these popular but inhumane living spaces are obvious.
Given ageing blocks and subdivided flats will not disappear in the foreseeable future, officials must double regulation and enforcement efforts. Under no circumstances can safety be compromised.