( dpa )- A senior manager has warned of more accidents at a Hong Kong cable car ride which has already seen one cabin crash 50 metres to the ground, a news report said Tuesday.
Operations manager Wong Chan-man quit just a month after the ride to Hong Kong's Big Buddha monument reopened following an accident in which an empty cabin fell to the ground, the South China Morning Post.
Wong reportedly complained cables on the year-old attraction were being strained by overloaded cabins and warned "if another cabin falls, it will spell the end of the Ngong Ping 360 (cable car ride)."
He expressed concern at maintenance standards by the new management which took over the ride after last year's accident, the newspaper reported.
Cabins with suspected problems were being put back into service too quickly and the speed and heavy loading of cabins were putting cables under strain, the Post quoted him as saying.
The 125-million- US-dollar , 5.7-kilometre cable car ride on Hong Kong's Lantau Island has been dogged by controversy since the accident last June which took place during after-hours testing.
No one was inside the cabin, capable of carrying up to 17 people, when it fell the equivalent of more than 13 storeys into a mangled heap in undergrowth.
After the accident, the Australian company running the cable car service was sacked and replaced by the MTR Corporation which runs Hong Kong's underground service.
The ride travels hundreds of metres above sea level over steep hillsides to the Big Buddha statue, the world's tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha.
A spokesman for the cable car company refused to comment on Tuesday's newspaper report and insisted that the departure of Wong had been a "personal matter."