FEHD fights a losing battle against illegal garbage in Hong Kong’s Central/Western District

A cleansing and pest control foreman with the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) has been jailed for four months for breaching the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance, after accepting an unauthorised loan of $60,000 from a subordinate to pay court debts.

The Central & Western District Cleansing & Pest Control foreman, Lai Tak-sum, 56, solicited the loan in September 2023, without the necessary authorisation pursuant to the “Acceptance of Advantages (Chief Executive Permission) Notice”.

Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) says it received a complaint and investigated. Lai was charged on June 4, pled guilty on July 25 at Eastern Magistrates’ Court, and was remanded in custody until sentencing yesterday.

FEHD has come under intense ICAC scrutiny lately: in July, a manager of FEHD’s contractor Sparkle Environmental Services was charged for extorting $38,000 in wages from contracted cleaning workers. Choy Wai-hong, 50, told the workers their pay had been miscalculated and induced them to pay him the difference.

FEHD officials steal radiation test food

And in June, five Health Inspectors were charged for conspiracy to steal food samples. The five used public funds to purchase around $88,000 of high quality seafood to purportedly conduct radiation level tests.

Inspectors are only supposed to order a maximum of 1kg of each food type and are also instructed not to order excessive food for any particular test and to dispose of any untested food properly with documentation.

In fact, the inspectors had taken large amounts of the Japanese food home without testing it: following a corruption complaint, ICAC officers subsequently recovered at their homes over 80 unused food samples, including canned abalone, white truffle sauce, crab bisque, Japanese rice and various types of pasta.

The five Health Inspectors, aged between 28 and 37, are Chan Ying-shan, Lam Hiu-kwan, Yu Fung-chun, Lau Shing-hin and Lee Chun-hei. They jointly faced one count of conspiracy to steal, contrary to Section 9 of the Theft Ordinance and Section 159A of the Crimes Ordinance.

Following the findings of this case, the ICAC has provided integrity refresher training to all FEHD staff responsible for food testing, reminding them to maintain a high standard of integrity when discharging their duties, and not to use their official position for personal gain.