SINGAPORE - Two supervisors were sentenced to jail on Wednesday (Sept 23) for committing negligent acts that endangered the safety of workers at a worksite near Changi Airport, resulting in the death of a Bangladeshi worker in 2017.
Tan Wee Meng, 44, a workplace safety and health officer (WSHO), was jailed for two months, while Lee Chung Ling, 48, a project manager, got three months' jail under the Workplace Safety and Health Act .
In a statement on Thursday (Sept 24), the Manpower Ministry (MOM) said Tan had failed to help construction firm Chan and Chan Engineering in identifying and assessing risks in the work processes. He also did not carry out on-site risk assessments or recommend measures to eliminate them.
Lee, appointed by Chan and Chan, was found to be negligent in reviewing the work processes at the site and in appointing a supervisor for formwork activities.
He also failed to approve risk assessments and safe work procedures for the use of metal module formwork at the workplace, and did not ensure that control measures in the risk assessment for the works were implemented, said MOM.
The worksite near Changi Airport was for a service road between Terminals 2 and 4 which included, among other things, the construction of a high-tension cable conduit.
The contract was awarded by Changi Airport Group to Chan and Chan in May 2016.
On March 22, 2017, Mr Miah Salim, a 43-year-old Bangladeshi worker employed by Chan and Chan, was inside an excavation pit erecting the formwork for the construction of the high-tension cable conduit.
He was using a hammer to adjust a wooden horizontal prop to support two metal plates when the prop slipped, causing one of the plates to fall inwards and hit his chest. He was rushed to Changi General Hospital, where he died.
In September 2018, Chan and Chan was fined $150,000 for failing to take reasonably practicable measures to ensure the safety and health of its employees.
Tan and Lee pleaded guilty to their offences on Aug 20, but were sentenced on Wednesday ( Sept 23).
The prosecutors had earlier stated in their submissions that due to Lee's failure to review the work methods, the workers had no specific method to build the formworks. They had to resort to an unsafe method, putting themselves in danger.
On his part, Tan had failed to notice that the workers in Mr Miah's team were deploying an unsafe and unauthorised method of constructing the formwork with steel plates during his site safety inspections.
"Both the accused had extensive duties under Chan and Chan's safety management system. Lee, as project manager, was overall in charge of the workplace, the works therein and safety. Tan as the WSHO, was the company main adviser for workplace safety and had an important role to place with regards to safety of the workplace," noted MOM prosecutors Mohd Rizal and Mohd Fadhli in the submissions.
They also revealed that these were not isolated single incidents of breach of their duties as there had been multiple breaches over a prolonged period, from October 2016 to March 2017.
