Almost all 89 injured Jurong rig workers discharged
UPDATED (11.12am 5 December 2012. Adds further updates on the injured workers)
Out of the 89 workers who were injured after a jackup rig at Jurong Shipyard tilted to one side on Monday, all but three have been discharged from various hospitals.
According to publicly-listed rig maker Sembcorp Marine, which owns the shipyard, a worker who had been admitted into West Point Hospital has a shin injury with hairline fracture. His shin is currently in a cast.
The two remaining workers are currently residing at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and is experiencing swelling in their ankles.
All three workers are in normal wards and are expected to be discharged in a few days.
Senior Parliamentary Secretary (SPS) for Manpower Hawazi Daipi went down to Singapore General Hospital on Monday evening, where he visited two workers who were under observation at the A&E ward.
They included a 22 year-old Singaporean female engineer and a Bangladeshi worker.
“MOM takes a very serious view of the accident – this is one of the worst industrial accidents we have seen in recent times," Hawazi said to reporters after the visit.
The injured workers had been sent to Alexandra Hospital, West Point Hospital, SGH and National University Hospital (NUH).
A check by Yahoo! Singapore on some of the injured workers showed that there were about 40 foreign workers sent to NUH, a staff of the shipyard company said. At about 8pm, most of the workers sent there have been discharged. A few of the remaining workers looked tired and shaken from the incident.
In a statement, Sembcorp Marine said the incident occurred at 10:30am during a jacking test onboard one of the jackup rigs under construction.
All personnel working onboard were accounted for with no fatalities.
The shipyard is currently investigating the cause of the incident, the company said.
Preliminary findings indicate that the jack-up mechanism of one of the legs of a three-legged jackup rig had failed, causing the rig to tilt to one side, said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).
All work has stopped at the rig, and work safety and health inspectors are on-site investigating the accident, it added.
The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) told Yahoo! Singapore that they were informed only past noon that there were multiple casualties from a berthed rig.
In a statement, SCDF said that it did not receive any calls for assistance at the shipyard worksite at 29 Tanjong Kling Road.
The agency later received information from sources that there was an “influx of casualties” in several hospitals. SCDF dispatched its officers from the Jurong fire station at 12:48pm to investigate further, and was told that the injured had been conveyed to hospital beforehand and that no further assistance was required.
