By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-11-25 09:06:19 | Updated at 2024-11-25 11:44:12
2 hours ago
Hong Kong may start using drones to carry out worksite safety inspections and gather evidence from next year, after 11 people died in industrial accidents in the first half of 2024 and authorities issued 3,600 orders to contractors to improve or halt their projects.
Deputy Commissioner for Labour Vincent Fung Hao-yin told a manpower panel meeting in the legislature on Monday that the government would step up its use of technology to improve safety.
“The construction industry, in the area of occupational safety, is one that has a relatively high number of incidents. When we look at our records, such as the inspections or our manpower deployment, we expend more than half of our resources on this industry and the other half on all other industries,” he said.
“Our department is looking into building our drone fleet for aerial photography and using the images collected to produce three-dimensional photorealistic models to aid evidence collection and law enforcement operations,” Fung said.
The drones – or what the department refers to as “small unmanned aircraft” – could be operational in the latter half of next year, he said.
According to the Labour Department, five of the 11 industrial accident fatalities in the first half of 2024 were from the construction industry. These accidents involved two cases of “exposure to or contact with harmful substance”, two of “struck by falling object” and one of “trapped in or between objects”.
