Chow Kai-shing lives in a Shek Wong Ching House flat that flooded when the pipes burst, and last month a government resettlement officer told him the buyout for his old block just got another $1 billion added to it. That is the headline today. The Wang Fuk Court compensation scheme, the one covering the estate that burned down, now has an extra billion dollars in it, plus a better rental-grant top-up for families waiting on the rebuild. Sounds generous. Then RTHK published the inquiry report on the fire, and it turns out the building was a death trap on paper before it was one in real life. Contractors faked fire safety compliance. Cut corners that were supposed to stop exactly what happened. So the government is now writing a very large check for a disaster that a signed piece of paper said would not happen.

Here is the part that should make you angry at your dai pai dong table tonight: nobody has said whose paper it was. HKFP is reporting contractors "deliberately cheated" on fire safety, which is a nice clean way of saying somebody signed a form that was a lie, and that form is why people are dead. The government's answer to a fabricated safety certificate is a bigger buyout cheque and a nicer rental subsidy, both paid by taxpayers, not by whoever held the pen. Compensation for the families is the right call. Nobody is arguing against helping the people who lost everything. But watch what happens next: does anyone go to jail for the signature, or does this end with money moving from the public purse into a compensation scheme, and the actual liars going home for dinner. That answer lands whenever charges get filed, and right now nobody is naming who's in the dock.