Diver's death incident
Supervisor jailed, ship repair firm fined $300k
Victim was sucked into ship's pipe opening while working at bow thrusters underwater
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Assistant diving supervisor David Ng Wei Li was sentenced to 12 weeks' jail over the 2014 underwater incident.
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The assistant diving supervisor of a ship repair company was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail yesterday over an underwater incident in 2014 which led to the death of a diver.
The company, Underwater Contractors, was sentenced to a $300,000 fine over the incident, during which diver Kwok Khee Khoon was killed after he was sucked into a ship's pipe opening.
The company and its supervisor, David Ng Wei Li, 37, had each been found guilty of an offence under the Workplace Safety and Health Act in February this year, following a trial.
The incident occurred at the Eastern Working Anchorage, near Marina South Pier, on June 4, 2014. Underwater Contractors had been engaged to carry out underwater survey works on vessel Frisia Kiel.
Mr Kwok was one of six divers working at the ship's bow thrusters when he was seen being sucked into a pipe opening in the vessel.
Several attempts by other divers to pull him away from the opening failed and he was retrieved only after the pump in the starboard sea chest - which is meant to suck in seawater to cool the ship's engines and generators - was shut down.
Mr Kwok was motionless, and paramedics pronounced him dead at around 7.40pm that day.
He was later found to have died of traumatic asphyxia.
In their earlier submissions, Ministry of Manpower prosecutors Delvinder Singh and Shanty Priya had argued that the safest way to perform the diving works would have been to completely shut down the pumps in the sea chest that the divers were to work in.
This was not done in the incident - the pumps were kept operating at "reduced flow" instead.
The prosecutors had also said Ng had instructed the divers to perform the work despite knowing that there was a risk of them being sucked into the sea chest.
Mr Alfred Lim and Ms Jaime Lye, lawyers for both the company and Ng, said their clients are intending to appeal against both their convictions and sentences.
For their respective offences, the company could have been fined up to $500,000, while Ng could have been jailed for up to two years and fined up to $30,000.
