An official tendering system designed to curb anti-competitive conduct is powerless to combat engineering firms colluding to manipulate Hong Kong’s lucrative building maintenance market, a public inquiry into the city’s deadliest fire in decades has heard. Testifying on the 21st day of an independent committee’s hearing, three Urban Renewal Authority (URA) officials said on Thursday that the statutory body had neither the capacity nor the resources to combat bid-rigging linked to estates’...
This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. An independent committee investigating the deadly blaze at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court residential estate is holding its 21st day of evidential hearings on Thursday, with three witnesses from the Urban Renewal Authority set to give evidence. The first witness, URA case manager Matthew Chan Yat-ho, has said the authority was aware of the practice of bid-rigging...