By Cam Lucadou-Wells
The owner of a Dandenong hotel building is fighting charges of failing to comply with orders to fix an alleged litany of fire risks.
Emad Farag, who owns the City Edge apartment hotel site in Thomas Street, initially missed the hearing at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 23 February.
But in a dramatic twist, Mr Farag appeared on the court’s video link just as magistrate Jason Ong was set to pass sentence.
Mr Ong ruled that the matter would have to be reheard – “back to square one” – in April.
Greater Dandenong Council had earlier told the court that on inspection in 2019, the hotel building failed to comply with essential safety maintenance and checks.
It lacked fire-and-smoke-proof doors and walls, as well as separations designed to stop fire spreading and to allow for safe evacuations, building inspector Peter Truong said.
The hotel’s fire-escape had a broken handrail, and some of the escape doors opened “in the wrong directions”.
The escape’s ground-floor exit opened into the foyer rather than out to the street, which “compromised the safety of the occupants supposed to be isolated from fire and smoke.”
Some of the fire escape signs were “confusing”, and smoke detectors were missing, Mr Truong said.
The situation was “endangering” the building’s “transient” guests who were “not familiar with their surroundings”.
“That’s why the essential safety measures are supposed to be maintained, to mind the safety of the occupants.”
Seven months later, inspectors found a “non-attempt to do any of the maintenance”. A check of maintenance records “still showed faults and non-compliance”.
In 2019, the council allegedly served building orders to Mr Farag for the City Edge hotel to fix the faults.
He and his company E&M Farag Pty Ltd were charged with five offences each, arising from three council inspections between March 2019 and January 2020.
They included failing to follow the orders such as to provide a fire engineer’s report confirming fire-rated walls and doors, and fire separations in the hotel.
They were also charged with failing to provide complete safety maintenance records or a signed copy of the annual essential safety measures report for the hotel.
The building – a mix of ground-floor retail with offices and serviced apartments – was constructed by Emad Farag’s company E&M Farag, prosecutor Mathew Sherwell told the court.
On his belated appearance at court, Mr Farag said he was “not aware” of the court hearing.
“My phone was on silent. I was in a meeting,” he said, when told of the court and prosecutor’s attempts to call him that morning.
Mr Farag said he thought he only had to appear if he didn’t comply with the building order. He conceded he received no correspondence to confirm the case was over.
He said that his compliance services witness ‘Donny’ had been liaising with the council. ‘Donny’ was on the phone to speak to the court, he said.
“We did everything to comply,” Mr Farag told the court.
“This isn’t the way we do things here,” Magistrate Ong said – pointing out that Mr Farag had not even heard or cross-examined the prosecution evidence first.
The council meanwhile was granted an injunction for Mr Farag to comply with the building orders by 24 April.
The matter was set for a re-hearing at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court on 27 April.
