A Hong Kong lawmaker has warned that the government's proposed moves to increase professional scrutiny of building maintenance projects could incur extra costs and delays. Election Committee lawmaker Andrew Lam Siu-lo called for deeper discussions on implementation details by the government and legislature. The measures respond to the deadly Tai Po inferno in late November.
Election Committee lawmaker Andrew Lam Siu-lo, a town planner by training, said on Thursday that expanding the Urban Renewal Authority’s (URA) role in building maintenance projects might require extra time and money. He urged the government and legislature to discuss the proposals’ implementation details in greater depth.
“We have reached consensus on strengthening supervision and providing more assistance to individual homeowners, but discussions are still lacking regarding the costs of the new measures,” he told a radio programme.
At the first meeting of the new Legislative Council term on Wednesday, government officials outlined a series of measures to reform regulatory mechanisms for building maintenance projects and crack down on bid-rigging.
Such measures were proposed in response to the deadly blaze in Wang Fuk Court of Tai Po in late November, which claimed at least 161 lives and displaced around 5,000 residents.
According to preliminary investigations, non-fire-retardant scaffolding mesh and polyfoam boards, applied to protect windows during renovation, were blamed for the rapid spread of the fire.
Lam emphasized the need for further talks on costs and public resource use to avoid impacting private buildings' maintenance projects.
