Apology for Hong Kong water scandal not enough to stem public’s anger: experts

A vague public apology and blaming a procedural “flaw” have failed to quell public discontent over the government’s water procurement scandal, political analysts have said, urging Hong Kong leader John Lee Ka-chiu to accelerate developing a civil servant accountability system.

Analysts made the call on Friday as the government said that the central tender board, chaired by the permanent secretary of the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, had given the final approval to the bottled water contracts involved. The confirmation meant more senior officials were involved in the decision-making process.

The growing debate on the saga followed an apology by Government Logistics Department director Carlson Chan Ka-shun on Thursday.

The director apologised “on behalf of his department” for awarding a three-year HK$52.9 million (US$6.8 million) bottled water contract to Xin Ding Xin Trade, which allegedly used fraudulent documents.

Chan, who has led the department since 2022 and is expected to retire soon, also attributed the saga to a system flaw that could not weed out scammers who combined illegally obtained authentic documents with forged ones to win bids, adding that the current tender policy for goods procurement did not require checks of bidders’ financial backgrounds.

Lau Siu-kai, a consultant for the semi-official Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies think tank, said on Friday that the way Chan apologised implied that he wanted to highlight collective responsibility.