The 2025 blaze at Tai Po’s Wang Fuk Court, which claimed 168 lives, remains a sorrowful collective memory for Hong Kong society. Yet as the city seeks to emerge from the shadows of this tragedy, a silver lining has appeared: The Independent Committee’s report has reconstructed the truth of the fire, clearly identifying its causes and structural failures to pave the way for true accountability. More importantly, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has demonstrated the political courage to take responsibility and the determination to drive crucial reforms to prevent similar tragedy from repeating in the future. As a sign of commitment to institutional accountability in the SAR’s governance, Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin has tendered her resignation to take political accountability.

Concurrently, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced at Thursday’s news conference following the release of the fire investigation report, a systemic overhaul covering several major areas of building maintenance, construction safety, and regulatory compliance. The proposed structural reforms, to be supervised by a newly established steering committee chaired by the chief secretary for administration, will ensure effective, swift rectification of existing regulatory loopholes, systemic defects, and hazards in the building and construction sector, hopefully preventing disasters from happening again.

In the face of such a catastrophic tragedy, the natural instinct of any bureaucracy is often self-preservation and the deflection of blame. The current administration, however, chose a path of transparency by appointing an independent committee to find out the truth. The inquiry report directly exposed long-standing systemic blind spots, regulatory lapses, and enforcement failures across four key departments: the Independent Checking Unit (ICU) under the Housing Bureau, the Buildings Department, the Fire Services Department, and the Labour Department. Rather than obfuscating these findings, the government openly accepted the Independent Committee’s report and immediately initiated a two-tier administrative investigation to trace civil service accountability under the Heads of Department Accountability System. This institutionalized practice of political accountability and targeted reprimand reflects the precise integrity and political courage expected of a responsible government.

Yet apologies and resignations alone cannot offer true solace to the victims and their families. A profound, root-cause overhaul of the regulatory system is the only meaningful path forward. The remedial blueprint unveiled on Thursday represents a comprehensive surgical intervention into Hong Kong’s building and safety regulations. Major measures include:

Criminalizing root malpractices: Bid-rigging in building maintenance will be criminalized, carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment and a HK$10 million ($1.27 million) fine. Furthermore, it will be incorporated into the Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance, granting law enforcement the power to freeze illicit assets. This directly targets the illicit cartels that have long plagued the private-estate maintenance sector.

Restructuring failed frameworks: The government will replace the Housing Bureau’s ICU, which exhibited severe regulatory deficiencies during the incident. A brand-new public housing maintenance regulatory body will be established to strictly enforce statutory regulations and tightly oversee maintenance works over all public housing and subsidized housing estates across Hong Kong.

Redefining the safety responsibility chain: Legislative amendments to the Fire Services Ordinance will explicitly integrate property management companies as legally designated “responsible persons” into the statutory framework for fire safety. This effectively eliminates the “no-man’s-land” that previously existed between property management and maintenance contractors.

Crucially, the formation of a steering committee led directly by the chief secretary for administration, alongside a new Cross-departmental Centralized Inspection and Complaint Data Registry, signals a departure from the siloed bureaucratic culture of the past.

The Wang Fuk Court fire exposed, in the most devastating way possible, structural vulnerabilities accumulated over decades within Hong Kong’s building maintenance, fire safety enforcement, and estate management regimes. What the government demonstrated now is not merely the political courage to own past failures, but the political willpower to transform a tragedy into permanent institutional protection for residents.

Now that a comprehensive reform blueprint has been laid out, the community must rally to support and rigorously monitor its execution. Only by codifying these measures into strict law and sustaining efficient enforcement can Hong Kong truly honor those lost in the fire and restore public trust in the city's safety grid.

The author is a current-affairs commentator.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.