TNAG-1449-FCO40-1953-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 13

Sir,

UMELCO

DRAFT SPEECH BY HON NGAI SHIU-KIT, OBE, JP

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL -

30.7.1986

Fire Services (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill 1986

Fire hazards in multi-storey buildings are evils which

If endanger lives and property. They must be eradicated. education will not achieve the aim, legislation and penalty will

surely help.

It is common sense that escape routes should not be obstructed, staircases and corridors should be cleared from stored goods, dangerous goods should not be stored without a licence, and so on. However, firemen fighting fires in multi-storey buildings, in particular factory buildings, often find escape routes obstructed, common areas blocked, and dangerous goods stored. These irresponsible acts of occupiers make it unnecessarily more difficult to extinguish fires which may burn for hours and even

The storage of a huge days, resulting in serious damages. quantity of dangerous sodium hydrosulphite in a Yau Tong factory where a fifth-alarm fire broke out recently is a typical example of such acts. They endanger not only other occupiers and workers in the same factory building, but also residents living in the proximity, and simply should not be allowed to persist any more.

Sir, I support the Fire Services (Amendment) (No.3) Bill 1986 in letter and in spirit. I am particularly agreeable to the move to increase the penalties to a fine of $25,000 on first conviction, and to a fine of $50,000 and one-year imprisonment on second and subsequent convictions of offences under the new laws.

UMELCO