Legco water fight: Hong Kong lawmaker meeting erupts in finger pointing over probe into lead-tainted scandal
Lawmakers hit out at each other during a debate on the lead-in-water scandal during yesterday's Legislative Council meeting.
Pan-democrats accused their pro-Beijing counterparts of blindly protecting the government, while their rivals countered that the pan-democrats were politicising the issue to win votes in the coming district council elections.
The debate - a third attempt by pan-democrats to invoke Legco's special powers by creating a select committee to investigate the issue - lasted over six hours and will continue tomorrow.
The pan-democrats, who slammed the two interim reports by the Water Supplies Department and the Housing Authority for failing to determine who should be held responsible for the scandal, said a formal Legco inquiry was the only way to get the full picture.
They also pointed out that the independent commission led by High Court judge Andrew Chan Hing-wai would also not identify those responsible.
"The reports only explained the problem as a matter of lack of awareness within the industry, but I find it hard to accept that there isn't any human factor involved," said NeoDemocrat Gary Fan Kwok-wai, who launched the motion debate.
