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The Commerce and Economic Development Bureau has noted that Ngong Ping 360 would resume its cable car service on April 5. A spokesman for the Bureau said today (April 3) that after resumption of service, the Tourism Commission (TC), together with the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD) and other relevant government departments, would continue to closely monitor the operation and services of the ropeway system, and ensure that the management company would implement the enhancement measures in various aspects on an ongoing basis, so as to maintain service reliability and stability.
"The management of Ngong Ping 360 showed inadequacies both in handling the incident of January 25 and monitoring its staff to discharge repair and maintenance works in a serious and diligent manner. Its management must learn the lessons and implement all the enhancement measures in a serious and sustainable manner," the spokesman added.
Over the past two months, the TC and the EMSD closely monitored Ngong Ping 360's works and provided assistance to it. In respect of the cable car operation and its repair and maintenance, Ngong Ping 360 had passed the EMSD's assessment and requirements, and obtained the EMSD's approval to resume cable car service.
As regards the enhancement of the contingency response mechanism and communication arrangements, the TC noted that Ngong Ping 360 had conducted a comprehensive review on its incident response mechanism, and had put in place a series of enhancement measures, including updating all the manuals on contingency response handling, deploying emergency buses flexibly to take passengers to leave Ngong Ping, making live announcements from the control centre to the cabins, providing additional emergency hotlines to handle passenger enquiries during incidents, and strengthening communication with the tourism industry, etc. It is believed that these measures would present an improvement over the previous situations.
On the relaunch of the cable car system, the spokesman said, "We actively encourage Ngong Ping 360 to collaborate with the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the tourism industry in launching its major marketing plans and concessions, with a view to restoring visitors' confidence."
Ends/Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Issued at HKT 17:10
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