CO129-614-1 Commission of Inquiry into fire at West Point- report 26-5-1949 - 22-12-1949 — Page 60

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Hong Kong and China Gas Company would have been very great with a cor-

responding risk of a disaster of even greater magnitude. We feel that

great care ought to be exercised in granting licenses for storage in

the neighbourhood of such installations.

Removal Permits:

75. At present the Dangerous Goods Regulations provide that in the

case of Category 1 goods (explosives) an owner must obtain a removal

permit on which a fee is charged before movement is permitted from one

place to another. The Chief Officer recommended to us that a removal

permit should be prescribed for all categories of dangerous goods ex- copt Category 8, which would mean that a permit for removal from ship

to shore would be required on the arrival of goods in the Colony. This

would help him to keep track of the movement of dangerous goods within the Colony and he thought it would be administratively practicable pro- vided that the payment of a fee, which involved an inconvenient delay,

were waived. His proposal received support from Mr. C.E. Terry, re-

presenting non-Chinese godown proprietors, but we consider that its in-

troduction would add another set of regulations to a number which are

already very inadequately observed. In principle it is sound, but we

consider that the extension of the removal permit system should be de- ferred until existing regulations are better observed and enforced,

when further considerations might be given to the proposal. We recom-

mend however that the permit system should be introduced for movement

of bulk consignments of raw celluloid or cinematograph film.

Present Facilities in the Colony for Storage of Dangerous Goods

and

Films:

76. A particular difficulty about the observance of the Dangerous

Goods Regulations, even were they well known to merchants and godown-

keepers, is that the relations provide for the proper segregation of

goods of one category from those of another, and for separation of

goods within the same category. Very few godowns exist in the Colony where such facilities are available, as they imply their splitting up

into a number of comparatively small self-contained compartments.

There

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