The current Act prescribes that in cases where the installation business entity and the supervising business entity are the same person or where they are related through blood relation prescribed in Article 777 of the Civil Act, no installation works and supervision may be conducted concurrently for the same fire-fighting system of a specific fire-fighting object.

Regarding this, the Ministry of Government Legislation has recently interpreted that the aforementioned provision of the Fire-Fighting System Installation Business Act does not apply to a case where the representative of a company registered as a fire-fighting system installation business and one as a fire-fighting system installation supervision business are related through blood relation.

Critics, however, point out that given the fact that decision-making in a company is done by its representative or officers, it may be difficult to expect independent and objective performance of supervision works when the respective representatives or officers of the installation business entity and the supervision business entity are relatives.

Thus, this Amendment aims to strengthen the independence and objectiveness of fire-fighting system installation supervision by prescribing that in cases where the installation business entity or the supervision business entity is a company and where their respective representatives or executive officers are relatives, etc., no installation works and supervision may be conducted concurrently for the same fire-fighting system of a specific-fire-fighting object (Article 24, subparagraph 4).

Where the installation business entity or the supervision business entity is a company and where their respective representatives or executive officers are relatives, etc., no installation works and supervision may be conducted concurrently for the same fire-fighting system of a specific-fire-fighting object (Article 24, subparagraph 4).