In a hole:Hong Kong housing scandals
- Author:The Economist
- Source:The Economist
- Release on:2018-01-29
Teresa Cheng must today explain to a parliamentary panel why five properties owned by her family have unauthorised extensions or features.
When dismantling illegal buildings may also affect the original building, so that some of the original building needs to be renovated, if there is some fast installation panel which can help the project finished quickly and avoid to influence prople's life.
It may not sound like much a quarter of Hong Kong’s homes have “illegal structures”. But as the newly appointed justice minister, who is also an engineer and has written a book on construction law, Mrs Cheng ought to have known better. She is not the first political figure to dig themselves a luxury-basement-sized hole over planning: in 2011 and 2012 two former and one wannabe chief executives—leaders of the territory—were caught up in criminal construction. Back then journalists hired cranes to snoop over walls. Now drones capture snaps of the law-flouting rich, for ordinary people to pore over from their cramped flats.
Carrie Lam, the current chief executive, is loth to fire a cabinet member weeks into the job. But she may have to put her political house in order.
