Spate of deaths from workplace accidents ‘not tenable’: Tan Chuan-Jin
Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin urged companies in Singapore on Wednesday to take ownership of safety and health at workplaces in light of the recent spate of deaths and injuries of workers this year.
“To date, eight workers have lost their lives to workplace accidents. This is not tenable. It is an employer’s basic responsibility to ensure that every worker returns home safely at the end of a hard day’s work,” said Tan in a blog post.
Just after his post appeared, a report had came out that a scaffolding at a construction site in Sentosa had collapsed, injuring 11 workers.
Tan’s remarks themselves follow a recent spate of worker deaths and injuries, several of which involved the collapse of scaffolding or cranes.
The latest fatal incident was on Tuesday, when a man fell four storeys to his death at a Paya Lebar worksite after a formwork structure he was standing on collapsed.
Based on discussions with the Occupational Safety and Health Division (OSHD), Tan said he found that many of the incidents could have been avoided.
He has asked the division to conduct thorough investigations on them so as to find out ways to prevent recurrences.
Tan also said that the unfortunate incidents occurred despite the recent additional measures taken up to ensure safety at the workplace.
He said that some companies may have neglected workplace safety due to the pressures of meeting project deadlines.
“This may have led to the adoption of unsafe work procedures in order to speed things up. I want to make it clear that, tight timelines or otherwise, there is no excuse for cutting corners or sacrificing workers’ safety or their lives,” he said.
The ministry issued an advisory on 18 January to professional engineers to “remind them of their obligations to carry out proper design, inspections and supervision of formwork construction and concreting processes”, he added.
Since 20 January, more inspections have been conducted at workplaces. In the past week, the OSHD has conducted 42 inspections of formwork structures. This has resulted in the issuance of four Stop-Work Orders, which requires companies to “rectify safety lapses before returning to work”, Tan said.
Tan has also asked OSHD to review programmes that help companies to assess and improve their workplace safety and health systems.
Two of the programmes are the Business Under Surveillance (BUS) programme and the Demerit Point System (DPS). The review of the programmes, which help companies know where they stand in terms of safety performance, will take place in the next few months to increase their effectiveness, he added.
Referring to a campaign organised by the Workplace Safety and Health Council (WSHC) called, “Work safely. Your family awaits your return”, Tan said, “It is a timely reminder of the importance of workplace safety and health, especially as we head into the Lunar New Year holidays.”
