In light of the shocking arson attack on a Tsuen Wan Line train earlier this month, MTR shops have been banned from selling lighters, local media reports.
Starting Wednesday (March 1) shops operating within MTR station premises will no longer be allowed to stock lighters, according to Apple Daily, weeks after a man set himself and an MTR carriage bound for Tsim Sha Tsui on fire, injuring 18 people.
Reactions to the decision have been tepid online, as netizens pointed out that anyone considering committing arson probably wouldn’t just turn around and go home because the nearest 7-Eleven’s out of Crickets.
“[They’re] chopping off their toes to avoid sand worms”, one Facebook user said, quoting a lovely Chinese idiom akin to the English saying “cut off your nose to spite your face”, a.k.a. the MTR’s using an unnecessarily drastic and possibly self-damaging measure to tackle a problem.
(We don’t know whether that’s true, but what we do know is that idioms are bananas in every language.)
Offline, one MTR passenger told Apple Daily reporters that “I don’t think that it’ll do anything, because you can still get lighters very easily outside the stations.”
Dr. Kwok Ka-ki, the Deputy Chairman of the Legislative Council’s Panel on Transport, dismissed the decision as “irrelevant”, and said the MTR should instead be focusing its attention on better emergency training for staff and fitting all trains with security cameras. Currently, around half of the MTR trains in operation are not fitted with surveillance measures, including the one damaged in the fire.
In addition to the increased security measures, some netizens have called for better mental health awareness and support in Hong Kong, given that the arsonist, a 60-year-old man, has a long history of mental illness.
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