Secretary for Transport and Housing Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said that he has never read or received emails relating to cracks in Singapore trains that share the same Chinese manufacturer with some of Hong Kong’s own ones.
On Tuesday, it was revealed that Singapore’s C151A trains were being secretly recalled and repaired by their mainland Chinese manufacturer CSR Sifang Locomotive & Rolling Stock Company Ltd due to cracks in their car bodies. The same mainland manufacturer is responsible for manufacturing nine trains for the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link and 93 trains for the Mass Transit Railway Corporation’s four urban lines.
Cheung said that the bureau was not aware of quality issues with the Singapore C151A trains, but Factwire disclosed on Thursday that multiple emails on the matter had been sent to the government department.
“I’ve never seen the emails,” Cheung told reporters after attending the regular Housing Authority meeting on Thursday. “I notice that the email address they sent to is ‘sthoffice’ and that’s the public email address of my bureau. In general, the staff in the office handles hundreds of these emails every day, and it’s forwarded to the relevant groups for follow-up according to their content and nature.”
“Oftentimes, they would have dealt with the matter already without my knowledge. On this particular issue, the emails did not reach me. But I’ve been concerned about the incident and I’ve asked my colleagues to trace the emails immediately and look into whether they’ve received these emails, what they contain, what their sources are and what follow-up actions have been taken.”
Cheung said that he hoped they will be able to sort out the information soon and give an account to the public, RTHK reported.
Cheung also said that it was difficult to determine at this stage whether the bureau could have been more alert when dealing with this, saying it depended on the contents of the email.
