Lack of archival law ensnares Hong Kong's government

FOR almost a year, Hong Kong's MTR Corporation has been mired in scandal. Reports of shoddy work in the US$12.4 billion Shatin-to-Central Link project led to the setting up of a Commission of Inquiry, followed by the government's disclosure that it couldn't guarantee safety because most inspection documents couldn't be located and apparently had never been submitted.

The saga highlights an administrative culture that plays down the importance of creating and preserving official documents, reflected in Hong Kong's unique position in the developed world of having no archival law. This led to hardly conceivable problems over the years and examples of disdain for documentation abound.

In 2013, after a ferry collision in which 39 people died, a Commission of Inquiry discovered that the Marine Department had decided years ago not to implement a law mandating safety features if the vessel had been built before 2008, when the law came …