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The Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) and Housing Department (HD) will join hands to carry out audit inspections to the lifts in all housing estates under the Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) of the Housing Authority (HA) to further enhance public safety, a Government spokesman said today (January 16).
The operation, which involves the checking of maintenance work carried out by contractors, will be completed before the end of March. In addition to the enhanced resources available to EMSD since November last year, the HD will second eight technical staff to EMSD to assist in the audit inspection work.
The EMSD earlier requested relevant Registered Contractors to conduct comprehensive checks on all the 1,448 lifts in 39 TPS estates within one month to ensure safety of those lifts under their maintenance.
The inspection programme was one of the measures decided at the first meeting of a joint working group co-chaired by the Deputy Director of EMSD, Mr Stephen Chan, and the Deputy Director of Housing (Estate Management), Mr Lau Kai-hung, this morning.
The working group aims to review and co-ordinate matters relating to maintenance of lifts in TPS estates, formulate and implement improvement measures relating to maintenance of lifts in these estates and monitor progress of the comprehensive inspection of the lifts by the contractors.
"Both EMSD and HD are concerned about the recent lift incidents in TPS estates and will join hands in increasing the awareness of building owners of the statutory requirements on lift safety," the spokesman said.
Apart from participating in the management affairs of the owners' corporations (OCs) of TPS estates, the HD will provide technical advice to the OCs on the supervision of contractors for lift maintenance, if so requested by the OCs.
The HD, with the support of EMSD, will also organise a series of seminars for these OCs to share with them the best practice on lift maintenance, the spokesman added.
"We will report progress on these joint efforts of HD and EMSD together with other measures initiated to enhance lift safety at the meeting of the Development Panel and Housing Panel of the Legislative Council next month," the spokesman said.
Ends/Friday, January 16, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:37
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