The construction consultant knew about the government inspections a week ago, an employee of the property management company has told a public inquiry into the deadly fire at Wang Fuk Court.
Lok Sin-ying, an employee of ISS EastPoint Properties, which managed the residential property in Tai Po, said on Wednesday that she got the impression from meetings organized by the property owners’ corporation that the renovation consultant “had frequent exchanges” with government staff.
Lok was asked by lawyer Jeffrey Tam, who represents a group of Wang Fuk Court residents, if she knew how many days before inspections the Housing Bureau’s Independent Inspection Unit (ICU) would usually inform Will Power Architects, the consultant overseeing the property’s renovation.
“In our meetings to follow up on the renovation project, I heard people from Will Power say more than once, ‘Next week, Amanda is coming to our property.’ I believe it was Amanda Lau from the government,” Lok said in Cantonese at the seventh hearing held by an independent committee investigating the tragedy.
Wang Fuk Court was undergoing a large-scale renovation when a fire broke out in late November, engulfing seven of its buildings and killing 168 people.
In the first session on March 19Senior Counsel Victor Dawes, lead counsel for the committee, said the ICU leaked advanced details of security checks to Will Power, who then allegedly alerted Prestige Construction, the main contractor.
He also noted that according to WhatsApp records dated October 27 – a month before the fire – ICU maintenance surveyor Amanda Lau texted Will Power employee Yeung Chi-man to arrange an inspection of the scaffolding nets.
Dawes called the ICU’s preliminary announcements “deeply troubling” during his opening statement.
However, Jenkin Suen, a lawyer representing the Hong Kong government, said on March 24 that there was a practical need for the ICU to arrange inspections in advance, as the presence of a representative from the inspected party would facilitate sampling and allow immediate communication.
“Hard to verify” signatures
Lok also said on Wednesday that ISS always helped the owners corporation handle “authorized letters” from residents of Wang Fuk Court, which were used for proxy votes, including when voting for the renovation consultant.
However, she was unable to verify the homeowners’ signatures, she said.
“We cannot verify the signatures. Even if there is only an ‘X’, I will treat it as a signature. But if there is any information missing from the letters, we will call the homeowners to ask if they have issued authorized letters,” Lok said at the hearing.
Residents in a previous session told the investigation about issuance of authorized letters and proxy votesappointing Tai Po South District Councilor Peggy Wong, a member of the Democratic Alliance for the Improvement and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB).
Lok told the independent committee on Wednesday that promissory notes were indeed “very common” in Wang Fuk Court homeowner voting.
“Essentially, there would normally be about 100 proxy ballots in each vote, which would account for about half of the votes. This significantly affected the outcome of the vote,” she said.
Did not ‘flee the scene’
Chung Sui-ha, an ISS building employee, also testified Wednesday.
She said she was working at Wang Cheong House, the first building to catch fire, on November 26. At about 2.48pm, a man – who was not a resident of Wang Cheong House – came to tell her the building had caught fire, she told the inquest.
“I ran to the first floor and broke the fire alarm, but it didn’t go off. At that time, there was no smoke, but there was fire from the window – you could hear it crackling,” Chung said as she cried.
She said she later went to the second and third floors of Wang Cheong House to break the fire alarms, but none went off.
“The fire became intense at that time and there was smoke inside,” Chung said, adding that she returned to the lobby of Wang Cheong House to help residents evacuate and asked people not to enter the building.
At the end of her testimony, Chung said she wanted to clarify that she did not run away after the fire broke out.
“Some neighbors said I was the first to leave the scene, but I want to tell everyone I didn’t. I stayed back to help evacuate the residents. In fact, I would say I was one of the last to leave,” she said.
Separately, Lok also said at the end of her testimony that claims online that staff at the property management company “disappeared” after the fire broke out were untrue.
Instead, she said, she used a loudspeaker to urge residents to evacuate that day and did not leave them in the middle of the fatal fire.
