Shock finding: Shoddy wiring put vulnerable Housing NZ tenants at risk of dying in fire

Saturday, 21 July 2018

The lives of vulnerable Housing NZ tenants in 'walkers and wheelchairs' were put at risk by illegal electrical work in a massive 5000-house earthquake rebuild project.

The owner of an electrical company signed off the work on 19 Christchurch houses. According to an electrical inspector, they could have caught fire.

Rakesh Kumaran, owner of the now-deregistered company Electrical Sales and Services South Island, was fined $5000 by the Electrical Workers Registration Board on Thursday. He was found guilty of a representative charge of directing an employee to perform electrical work without a licence. 

One 63-year-old tenant, Jane Boyd, told Stuff how the electrics in her bathroom 'sparked' alarmingly. 'I'm nervous about fires and power,' she said.

**READ MORE: 

* Man who lied about being an electrician fined

* Gisborne electrician fined for unauthorised work

* Electrician fined over poor work**

Another company Kumaran owns, the Manukau-based Electrical Sales and Services, is still active and retains its Housing NZ contracts in Auckland. 

The six-member Electricity Workers Registration Board is legislated to investigate and censure rogue electricians. It has the power to disqualify them or impose fines of up to $10,000.

Auckland-based Kumaran was found guilty of authorising his employee Pritesh Pritesh to perform unlicensed electrical work. 

This comes after Kumaran pre-signed two booklets containing code of compliance certificates and left them in Christchurch. The certificates were used to mark Pritesh's work as compliant, so that it could be billed for later. 

But the illegal work was discovered when an auditor noticed certificates of compliance had been written for a person without a licence to do the work. The discovery sparked a two-year investigation.

​Kumaran said he had no knowledge Pritesh was doing the electrical work he wasn't authorised to be doing, and his lawyer Tony Tapsell said the pre-signed compliance certificates were the product of a business under strain from a huge workload.  

'Five thousand properties were all of a sudden being worked on,' Tapsell said. 'Some of them were being subcontracted to Mr Kumaran. And this was the reason why the management side got on top of him.'

But Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment lawyer Rebecca Denmeade, who took the charges to the board, told the hearing it was 'wilful deception' and refuted claims of a mistake. 

At Pritesh's hearing, investigator and electrical inspector Peter Macmillan said the work was 'extremely poor' and could have caught fire.

The tenants – elderly people in walkers and wheelchairs – could have died, he said. 

'If there had been something gone wrong there would have been quite a risk. Of the houses that I've visited most of them have elderly people in them, they have walkers or wheelchairs. It would be unlikely that they would be able to get out of the house,' he told the hearing.

Pritesh was found guilty of carrying out prescribed work outside his licence registration and providing false or misleading returns in a separate hearing. A decision on his penalty is pending.  

On Saturday, Stuff visited several of the 19 state homes  where the subcontracted work was carried out between March and July 2014.

Jane Boyd, 63, lives in one of these homes and suffers from a severe anxiety disorder, in part related to an electrical accident as a child. She is so distressed her house will catch fire she switches everything off except her fridge when she leaves the house. 

She said the electrical work on her Heidi Pl, Broomfield, home was done by 'real cowboys'.

It was never inspected until a second electrician visited the property for unrelated work and found exposed wires in the roof. The original work, including a new light installed in the bathroom, 'sparked' immediately and she had to call the men back in to fix it, throwing up immediate red flags, she said. 

'I'm nervous about fires and power. I'm always thinking I hope nothing catches fire; I hope the meter box is safe, all things like that,' she said. 'I felt nervous for ages, thinking I hope the house doesn't catch fire.'

She said it was particularly distressing that no-one had notified her that anything could be wrong.

John Gray, president of the Home Owners and Buyers Association of New Zealand, said electrical fires were especially dangerous at residential properties because they did not have sprinklers and the fire was often hidden within walls.

Gray said occupants would be overwhelmed by the smoke and wouldn't be able to tell there was a fire until it was too late. 'Most people wouldn't be able to pick the smell of hot electric cabling.'

Other electrical faults left people at risk of electric shocks, Gray said.

A Housing NZ spokesman said the agency monitored all work undertaken on its properties very closely. 

'In 2014, while checking completed work undertaken on some of its Canterbury properties post-earthquake remediation, one of our staff, who is also a fully certified electrician, observed some electrical work they felt was substandard and did not comply with standards.

'It was confirmed this work was non-compliant and it was subsequently agreed Housing NZ would lodge a formal complaint with the Electrical Workers Board.'

Kumaran was initially 'stood down' after it was discovered his company had undertaken work on other Housing NZ properties in Auckland.

However, 'no serious issues around electrical work were identified', and Kumaran's company was allowed to continue its work as a subcontractor.  'It is extremely disappointing this situation arose and Housing NZ is pleased to see the action taken by the Electrical Workers Board.'

Kumaran declined to be interviewed.