Employers in Hong Kong who commit serious occupational safety violations could face an increased maximum penalty of HK$10 million – up from HK$500,000 – together with two years of imprisonment, as the legislature passed an amendment bill aiming to boost deterrence.
Hong Kong lawmakers on Wednesday approved the Occupational Safety and Occupational Health Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2022, which significantly raised the maximum fine in a bid to reflect the severity of the offences and deter offenders.
The passing of the amendment came a little more than a month after the Labour Department pressed charges against more than 60 individuals involved in a fatal crane collapse at a construction site in Sau Mau Ping last September. The incident left three dead and six injured.
‘Relatively low’ fines
Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun told the legislature on Wednesday that the average number of deadly industrial accidents in Hong Kong stood at around 20 annually over the past decade, with no sign of a downward trend. Such a situation could be attributed to the “relatively low” penalties for violations of occupational safety laws, he said, while the relevant legislation had not been reviewed for more than two decades.
“[The fine] is also far lower than the maximum fines for occupational safety and health regulations in some advanced overseas regions, so it is necessary to revise the maximum penalties for occupational safety and health regulations to strengthen their deterrence,” Sun said.
The amended legislation allows the Labour Department to charge employers, owners and occupants of premises with indictable offences. It also included provisions that required a court to consider the revenue and the scale of the convicted parties’ operations during sentencing.
The Labour Department will also be given more time to gather evidence to press summary offence charges, as the prosecution period was extended from six months to nine months.
The authorities had proposed an even higher maximum fine of HK$50 million, but it was later reduced to HK$10 million. Responding to concerns among small and medium-sized enterprises who said the fine “seemed too high,” the labour minister said the threshold for initiating prosecutions using the new format of indictable offence would be relatively high.
Reviewing cases prosecuted by the Labour Department between 2009 and 2020, Sun said only seven would qualify as being prosecuted as indictable offences, if such laws were already in place at the time: “It has to be an extremely serious case of violation of the law, with either extremely high culpability or extremely serious negligence. In addition, the consequences had to be very severe,” Sun said.
The city saw numerous major industrial accidents last year, with at least 13 construction workers dead in accidents on building sites last year. Last July, a giant LED screen crashed into two dancers performing on stage at a concert by popular local boy band Mirror. One of them remains hospitalised.
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