184 Cases of Illegal Subcontracting in Fire Facility Construction Detected... Fire Agency Expands Separate Ordering

[Asia Economy Reporter Osangdo] Construction Company B signed a contract with client A last year for the installation of fire protection facilities and then subcontracted the work at a low price to Company C. Since this company did not have a fire protection license, it prepared documents for the fire station's construction commencement report as if A and C had directly contracted with each other.

The Fire Agency announced on the 8th that, after conducting a full inspection of 8,932 fire protection facilities nationwide from May to October last year, it detected illegal activities such as subcontract violations at 184 sites.

Among the detected cases, 18 related companies were criminally charged. These included violations of prime contract and subcontract agreements (6 cases), illegal operations by unregistered companies (4 cases), double employment of fire protection technicians (7 cases), and illegal lending of certificates (1 case).

The Fire Agency explained that, in addition to criminal charges, fines (162 cases) and administrative sanctions (82 cases) were simultaneously imposed.

Violations of prime contract and subcontract agreements mostly involved construction companies illegally entrusting fire protection construction work to non-fire protection contractors and fabricating side agreements as if they had contracted with specialized fire protection companies, or construction companies registered as fire protection contractors illegally subcontracting the work they won to other specialized companies.

The Fire Agency explained that subcontracting at prices lower than the actual construction cost leads to poor-quality construction. To prevent such illegal prime contract and subcontract practices, the Fire Agency has encouraged local governments to enact ordinances. In the public sector, fire protection construction work is separately ordered to specialized companies, similar to electrical and information communication construction. The Fire Agency plans to expand this separate ordering system to the private sector as well.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.