A wall at To Kwa Wan MTR station – currently under construction – was improperly built and needed to be “shaved thin,” lawmaker Claudia Mo said on Monday, citing information provided by a frontline engineer working on the project.
According to Mo, part of a 30-metre-long wall at the To Kwa Wan MTR station was found to be of uneven thickness. She said this was due to an oversight which led to the wall being built too thick, hampering the installation of the escalators. In April this year, workers were asked to remove one of the two layers of reinforcing bars and to cover it up with cement.
“They had already laid two layers of reinforcing bars and filled in cement. The problem was with the thickness, so they had to take away the front layer and only one layer remained,” Mo said, showing a photo of the station platform.
Mo added that the wall connected the station lobby to the train platform, and expressed concern that it was structurally unstable.
The MTR Corporation responded that it had been notified by contractors that parts of the station were not built according to the original design. The MTRC has asked the contractors for a proposal to rectify the defects.
To Kwa Wan station is part of the HK$97.1 billion Sha Tin to Central Link expansion. It was reported last week that workers at Hung Hom station, also part of the Sha Tin to Central Link, cut short steel bars to make them look as if they were correctly installed.
Lawmaker Michael Tien, chair of the legislature’s Subcommittee on Matters Relating to Railways, said that the MTR Corporation was responsible for To Kwa Wan station’s design, and the contractor responsible for implementation was a joint venture between Samsung C&T Corporation and Hsin Chong Group Holdings.
Tien said the MTRC management was not aware of the incident at the time, and those in charge of overseeing the construction should be held responsible.
HKFP has reached out to the contractors for comment.
