The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) said on the 18th that it will conduct intensive inspections of 75 private construction sites in the Gyeongsang region from the 19th through Nov. 13.
The crackdown is part of a campaign against illegal subcontracting that also allows voluntary disclosure, which the ministry has been running since Oct. 12 and will continue through Dec. 31. After starting with public construction sites, the ministry has now widened the scope to private sites. The move follows intensive inspections in the greater Seoul area carried out through a joint support team for resolving unpaid construction equipment rental fees and other overdue payments at private sites, formed in May with the Korea Construction Equipment Association and other groups.
The ministry had earlier selected 275 public sites suspected of or reported for illegal subcontracting, working with 10 major state-run institutions. This time, it will concentrate 15 inspectors from its headquarters and five regional land management offices in the Gyeongsang region and inspect private sites together with the Korea Construction Equipment Association.
Through the intensive inspections in the greater Seoul area in May, the ministry uncovered 29 cases of illegal subcontracting and 60 other violations of the Framework Act on the Construction Industry, and resolved about 125 million won in unpaid construction equipment rental fees across 11 cases. This time, the ministry plans to focus the inspection capacity of its five regional land management offices on the Gyeongsang region to make the checks more effective.
The ministry will also link its reward program for whistleblowers more closely to on-site enforcement. To make the reward program for reporting illegal subcontracting more active, it plans to include sites reported to the regional land management offices and sites with unpaid fees among the targets of this crackdown, and to quickly verify the contents of the reports against actual construction practices.
"Public project owners moved first to root out illegal subcontracting, and now we are expanding inspections to private sites," First Vice Minister Kim Yi-tak said. "We will make sure reports lead quickly to actual enforcement and penalties through the reward program, while also encouraging voluntary correction, to establish fair order at construction sites."