Tai Po probe: missed checks at Wang Fuk Court due to late notice of new guidelines – as it happened

Housing Bureau unit missed fire safety checks at Wang Fung Court after new guidelines arrived too late, hearing told. | Contesto: cronaca

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• Tai Po probe: missed checks at Wang Fuk Court due to late notice of new guidelines – as it happened

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A senior officer from the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit (ICU) testified on Thursday that missed fire safety inspections at Wang Fung Court were the result of new oversight guidelines reaching his team too late to be implemented before the blaze that became Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades. Nick Yung Siu-lun, the second of three ICU witnesses called before a government-appointed independent committee, told the hearing that the unit had not conducted scheduled checks at the public housing estate because updated protocols for fire risk assessments were only circulated shortly before the incident. The admission came as the committee pressed for answers on systemic failures in the run-up to the disaster, which claimed multiple lives and raised urgent questions about enforcement of building safety standards. The hearing, now in its second week, has focused on the ICU’s role in overseeing fire safety compliance across Hong Kong’s public housing stock. Witnesses have described a unit operating with limited staff, unclear procedures, and inconsistent communication with frontline inspectors. Yung’s testimony painted a picture of a team struggling to keep pace with evolving regulations, compounded by what he described as a delayed distribution of revised guidelines from the bureau’s central office. “We received the new checklist only a few days before the fire,” Yung told the committee, according to a transcript of the proceedings. “There was no time to retrain staff or reschedule visits. The old system was still in place when the incident occurred.” The explanation drew sharp questions from committee members, who noted that the ICU had flagged no deficiencies at Wang Fung Court in its last review, despite later investigations revealing critical gaps in fire doors, alarm systems, and evacuation routes. The testimony underscores broader concerns about Hong Kong’s regulatory oversight of aging public housing estates. Wang Fung Court, built in the 1980s, had undergone partial renovations but was not subject to the same rigorous checks applied to newer developments. Critics have argued that the ICU, created in 2019 to centralize compliance monitoring, was...

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Categoria: cronaca