Stately Home
There are lots of short term matters we need to sort out quickly arising from the Tai Po fire tragedy (who turned off the alarms; why was the works area packed with highly combustible materials etc) but there are also some systemic issues that need to be tackled if we are to avoid a repeat of the disaster.
The fact is Hong Kong faces two sorts of ageing problems: old buildings and the old people who live in them. Sometimes they overlap.
Hong Kong is inevitably a high-rise city, because so many people are crammed into a relatively limited land area. If you can’t build out, you build up. Since we have been developing like this since the 1950s, with the passage of time many buildings have started to show their age.
According to a study by the University of Science and Technology, in 2021 of the approximately 50,000 buildings in Hong Kong more than 9,100 were over 50 years old, and by 2030 it forecast that number would be closer to 14,000. Some 44,250 of the total are privately owned and of these 81 per cent (around 36,000) are residential.
All building structures experience normal wear and tear and therefore require maintenance. Two other factors add to the demand for building works: statutory checks imposed by the government on safety grounds; and cosmetic work as owners desire to keep their homes looking nice from the outside, reflecting pride in ownership.
Under the Mandatory Building Inspection Scheme owners of selected high-rise buildings aged 30 years or above are required to appoint a Registered Inspector to carry out the prescribed inspection and supervise the prescribed repair works found necessary of the common parts, external walls and projections. The Mandatory Windows Inspection Scheme prescribes a similar arrangement for such buildings aged 10 years or above.
As at the end of 2023, 64 per cent of all private buildings had reached the 30 year threshold and a further 17 per cent would do so within 10 years.
Taking the three factors together (normal wear and tear, statutory obligation, pride in ownership) that means over the next 20 years there will be many thousands of instances where multi-storey residential towers are subject of maintenance works. Responsibility for organising and supervising the works rests with the owners. There are two problems here: only about half of the buildings in Hong Kong have an owners corporation; and secondly, whatever form the owners representation takes (OC or otherwise), they may not be well qualified to undertake these duties.
We know from the troubled history of projects commissioned by well qualified and experienced agencies such as the Mass Transit Railway Corporation that supervision of the construction industry is challenging. How much more difficult would it be for the members of a voluntary part-time management committee.
Meanwhile according to the Census and Statistics Department, population ageing is expected to continue. Excluding foreign domestic helpers, the proportion of elderly persons aged 65 and over is projected to increase from 20.5% in 2021 to 36.0% in 2046. The fact that Hong Kong people have one of the longest life expectancies in the world is of course a good thing. But older people do tend to have mobility issues and this has implications for fire safety.
Some seniors live in purpose designed care homes which by law are on lower floors of high rise composite buildings if not stand alone. But many now live in, and will in future be occupants of, normal multi-storey residential towers. Since lifts should not be used during fires the normal means of escape is via the staircase. Even if the fire alarms are working properly and switched on, those who are mobility-impaired will have difficulty evacuating safely without assistance.
Addressing these two areas of combined difficulty is not glamorous and headline-grabbing, but it is vital for the long-term wellbeing of Hong Kong people. It will have to involve many government departments. Home Affairs will have to continue the painstaking work of building proper owners corporations or equivalent organisations so that every building has a proper body responsible for management. The Housing Bureau and Buildings Department must continue to implement the programme of mandatory safety inspections falling under their purview, and to manage the lists of Registered Inspectors and Qualified Persons so that malpractice and collusion can be eliminated. Owners organisations must be able to engage these parties with confidence. Likewise, the Property Management Services Authority must discipline companies in that area.
All three arms of the ICAC (Operations, Prevention, Community Relations) need to step up their work in the building maintenance sector. Media reports of bid-rigging in the industry are too numerous and credible to be ignored. They raise the twin questions of whether the Competition Authority is the right body to tackle the situation and whether it has sufficient powers.
It would be useful to provide training programmes for members of management committees and provide simple manuals with checklists of issues to watch out for. This could be an area where our district councillors might help.
I am not sure how feasible it is, technically or financially, to include safety features in the design of future buildings so that residents can safely take shelter in situ while the fire is fought or at least buy them more time for rescue. Whether sprinkler systems should be made standard is a question for the professionals to weigh up. But in the meantime we need a root and branch review of the whole system of conducting repair and maintenance operations on our high-rise buildings. We should all wish the independent review committee, whether or not upgraded to a statutory commission of inquiry, every success.