Safety regulations to be raised after HKZMB deaths

The enforcement of safety regulations on construction sites will be heightened, said Hong Kong’s Secretary for Labor and Welfare, Stephen Sui, according to a report published by Hong Kong’s The Standard. The enforcement is following 10 worker deaths so far this year due to industrial accidents on construction sites.

The deaths include two workers who died last week when a temporary platform at the site of the under-construction Hong Kong-
Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HKZMB) collapsed.

The Hong Kong Secretary said that after the Labor Department conducted more than 62,000 regular inspections at construction sites, it found that the accidents in question were due to inadequate safety measures.

From these inspections, 174 “suspension notices” were delivered and 348 “improvement notices” were issued in January and February this year alone. A total of 317 prosecutions were also undertaken in the period.

According to The Standard, Sui, speaking at an event on the weekend, said that the accident at the HKZMB site is currently under investigation by a committee in Hong Kong. He said that the existing penalties are high enough to deter employers from poor safety practices, citing two cases that resulted in fines of HKD185,000 and HKD520,000.

However, the chairman of the Hong Kong Construction Industry Employees General Union, Chow Luen-kiu, said during the event that these fines were negligible when compared to the total construction costs of the projects in question. He said that the fines would be assumed by employers as business costs.

“A bridge costs HKD10 billion or HKD20 billion. If a worker died, [the contractor] may compensate the family with some HKD1 million and the court may fine it hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said, as cited by The Standard. “The companies may just count everything as the business cost.”

He added that the HKZMB is now seen as “the most dangerous construction site” in Hong Kong.

Underground tunnel completed

The construction of the underground tunnel that connects to the HKZMB has been completed. The 55-kilometer-long bridge will open by the end of this year, linking the cities of Macau, Hong Kong and Zhuhai. Contractors responsible for the tunnel’s construction said that all testing post-construction has been successful. During the construction of the tunnel, various risk assessments were conducted to account for the potential inflow of water and mud, as well as structural collapse.