Budget Speech

Building the Community

Promoting Building Maintenance

117.      Last month, an old building at Ma Tau Wai Road, Hung Hom, collapsed. While the cause is still under investigation, the incident has aroused public concern over the problem of building safety. The responsibility for building maintenance rests with property owners. They must promptly carry out inspections and maintenance of their properties. In this connection, we hope that the legislative process of the relevant bill could be completed at the earliest possible time for the prompt implementation of the Mandatory Building Inspection Scheme and Mandatory Window Inspection Scheme.

118.      In conjunction with the Hong Kong Housing Society and the URA, the Government has introduced a number of support measures in the past few years to provide property owners in need with technical and financial assistance for carrying out building repair and maintenance works. Last year, I launched the $2 billion "Operation Building Bright" campaign to provide one-stop assistance for the repair and maintenance of about 2 000 buildings aged 30 years or above.

119.      To provide timely assistance to more owners of old buildings to repair their properties, I propose to allocate additional funding of $500 million for "Operation Building Bright" to provide targeted assistance to those owners who cannot co-ordinate maintenance works on their own, including owners of dilapidated buildings without owners' corporations.

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