Crumbling buildings show Hong Kong needs to focus on important safety issues

Incidents of concrete falling from buildings in Mong Kok are just the latest symptom of the neglect shown towards property maintenance
Unsafe, unauthorised building works are out of control, and the government should deal with those problems rather than tearing up Fanling golf course

Mike Rowse

Published: 4:30pm, 30 Jul 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

Two months ago, I received a statutory notice from the Buildings Department about the security door at the rear entrance to my flat. This was something of a surprise as at no time in the quarter of a century since I bought the flat has there been any modification to that door.

Nonetheless, since someone had gone to the trouble of issuing a statutory notice, including the usual range of dire threats – huge fines, long prison sentences and so on – I thought it best to go and look.

The problem with the door was immediately obvious. It was one of the old-fashioned outward-opening ones, presumably installed decades ago by a previous owner, which might be hazardous in the event of fire because opening it would block the small rear lobby.

The door was illegal and would have to go. A quick call to the contractor got the old door removed, a new, safe one ordered and installed and a progress report filed with the Buildings Department. All this was done within six weeks. All well and good, then, with just a lingering doubt in one’s own mind about how lucky we all were to have survived so many years in a potentially dangerous situation.

It seems that not everyone is as scrupulous and prompt in dealing with such matters. Earlier this month, concrete fell from a Mong Kok building twice within three days, causing injury to people in a parked vehicle on the first occasion and road blockage on the second. There have since been cases involving other buildings.

Buildings Department staff inspect debris on the road outside the Po On Building on July 5. Photo: Jelly Tse

In the days that followed, media reports revealed an alarming situation. First, the Buildings Department had issued a mandatory inspection order for the building in 2014. Eventually, an authorised person was appointed to carry out a survey and draw up a report on the remedial works that needed to be carried out.

Efforts were in place to tender out the works, but a contractor has yet to be appointed. Nine years after the situation was deemed serious enough for an inspection order to be issued, no repair works have actually been done or illegal structures removed.

That might not be the worst of it, either. The falling concrete had come from a new canopy – also unauthorised – that was under construction. In other words, the report on what works need to be done is already out of date. Will that require another survey and a new tender exercise involving further delay?

Stepping back from the individual case and looking from a wider perspective, we can see just how big the problem is. Some 7,000 buildings have been subject to a mandatory inspection order, but 4,000 have yet to complete it.

Q&A: what makes an ‘illegal structure’ in Hong Kong, and how you can change a flat without breaking the law

There is a subsidy scheme to help less-well-off residents of old buildings pay for the repairs. The Urban Renewal Authority, which administers the scheme, recently revealed that of the more than 1,100 applications it had approved, only 110 had completed the works as of January this year.

This is a multifaceted problem which needs a multifaceted solution. The first part must be public education, explaining to people why they need to take care of their own property. Some people might feel their job is done once they have bought a flat, but real life is not like that.

Maintaining your property as a real asset requires keeping it in good condition, and that costs money. Since so many blocks of flats include multiple owners, an incorporated owners association can help with this. Ensuring there is such an organisation, and that it is up to the task, is a job for the Home Affairs Bureau under Secretary Alice Mak Mei-kuen.

Judging from her comments last week, Mak is aware of the responsibility falling on her shoulders. This is an area requiring relentless effort in unglamorous work over a prolonged period. We should all wish her well.

Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak attends a press conference at the government headquarters in Tamar on May 2. Photo: Jelly Tse

However, the primary responsibility must rest with Director of Buildings Clarice Yu Po-mei and Secretary for Development Bernadette Linn Hon-ho. After all, we are talking about building safety and, indirectly, housing supply. There is no point throwing all our energy into building new homes at one point of the supply process if existing ones are crumbling at the other.

It is here that I perceive the major danger. The situation with respect to unauthorised building works is out of control, despite various efforts in the past to draw a line. Does anyone remember the previous chief executive’s suggestion, while in a more junior post, for residents of the New Territories to register all such works with the government? Whatever happened to that scheme?

All I see now in the New Territories is three-storey houses with structures on the roof. We have seen a candidate for chief executive with an unlawful basement so large it torpedoed his campaign, as well as a secretary for justice with properties which had such extensive alterations that overlooking them was not possible.

Nobody wants an administration so overbearing that ordinary citizens responsible for non-dangerous, minor infractions in their own homes feel afraid, but we have to find a way to distinguish between minor, non-dangerous works that can be tolerated and alterations that pose a risk to others. Linn might be better placed to do this if she focused more on the big picture and less on destroying Hong Kong’s world-class facilities at the Fanling golf course.

Mike Rowse is the CEO of Treloar Enterprises