Hong Kong Buildings Department under fire for failure to remove increasing illegal structures
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 08 July, 2015, 12:40pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 08 July, 2015, 7:21pm
Lai Ying-kit [email protected]
An illegal rooftop structure in Sham Shui Po. The Buildings Department had been too slow too remove such constructions, lawmakers said. Photo: David Wong
Hong Kong’s Buildings Department had been too slow to remove illegal constructions, the Legislative Council’s public accounts committee said today, as it was revealed that reports of such structures had risen 67 per cent while removals had dropped 45 per cent.
In a report tabled to Legco, the committee said the annual number of reports of unauthorised building works had increased from 24,577 in 2004 to 41,146 last year, but the number of their removals had decreased from 41,210 to 22,866 over the same 10-year period.
Committee chairman Abraham Razack said at today’s meeting that the Buildings Department had taken a long time to carry out removal orders in these cases.
Some of the cases even involved rooftop structures with serious fire hazards erected on single-staircase buildings, he said.
“The committee expresses grave concerns and finds it unacceptable that the Buildings Department … has failed to tackle the unauthorised building works problem in an effective and efficient manner.”
The committee’s report follows up on an April report by the Director of Audit on the results of value for money audits on government departments’ operations.
The committee also expressed concerns in its report about a manpower shortage in the government flying services and high vacancy rates in cooked food bazaars managed by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department.
It said the government flying services performed a multitude of tasks, ranging from search and rescue operations to fire extinguishing efforts, aerial surveys and carrying authorised passengers.
It urged the department to reprioritise its duties and study outsourcing some of them in the face of a manpower strain.
On the cooked food bazaars, the committee urged the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department to expedite closing down those with a high vacancy rate and formulate future plans for cooked food markets.
