The MTR Corporation has been urged to explain as soon as possible why it took its staff four hours to find a man after the family reported him missing at Hung Hom station last week.

The 66-year-old man, surnamed Hui, was dead when he was eventually found inside an accessible toilet in the concourse of the station.

According to district councilor Leo Chu, who’s assisting the bereaved family, Hui was on a train with his wife travelling from Ma On Shan to Long Ping Station last Wednesday.

When they approached Hung Hom station just before 5pm, he said he had to get off to use the toilet.

Since his wife had just had a surgery in her leg, and Hui didn't want her to give up her seat on the train, he told her to proceed with the journey and wait for him in Long Ping.

After Mrs Hui arrived at Long Ping at around 5:30pm, she texted her husband but received no response. She then notified other family members, who called MTR staff at Hung Hom station and asked them to look for Hui.

The family said they called the MTR multiple times, and was repeatedly told that all the toilets had been searched and Hui was nowhere to be found.

Later that evening, a cleaner discovered the 66-year-old who was already dead.

The district councilor told an RTHK programme on Monday that MTR should come clean on whether there were any relevant guidelines and if its staff had abided by them.

“As the public transport with the highest patronage, with more than four million commuters taking its trains every day, MTR has stringent guidelines on crowd control. I believe it would have guidelines on how to locate missing people,” Chu said.

“Did the staff follow the guidelines? And what was the manpower arrangement on that day? We know MTR had cut headcount on cleaners and station staff, were they too busy to handle the matter and led to this incident? These are areas that need to be looked at.”

Meanwhile, the vice chairman of Legco’s subcommittee on matters relating to railways, Gary Zhang, said staff shouldn’t even need a guideline to handle situations like this.

“A very common sense response would be to knock on the door, and if no one answered, they should follow up and see why the person inside was unresponsive. Why wasn’t it done? It’s very regrettable and MTR has to explain,” he said.

MTR had issued a statement saying it’d conduct an internal investigation, adding: “We take the case seriously and will maintain communication with the family of the concerned male passenger to give an early account of the case, as well as providing appropriate assistance to the family.”

The railway company also undertook to install motion detectors in over 90 accessible toilets along the MTR network within three months.