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SINGAPORE – An industrial gas supply company and its CEO failed to take steps to ensure workplace safety, leading to a fatal explosion that killed a chemist in 2015.
New mother Lim Siaw Chian, 30, died and at least seven others were injured after an explosion at the Leeden National Oxygen Specialty Gas Center Quality Control Laboratory on Tanjong Kling Road near Pioneer Road on 12 October of that year.
Ms. Lim had returned to work after maternity leave a week before the tragedy. The former Malaysian had received Singapore citizenship just a month before she died.
He left behind a daughter who was six months old at the time.
Leeden National Oxygen, which sent a representative to court, and its CEO Steven Tham Weng Cheong, now 69, pleaded guilty on Tuesday (December 1) to a crime under the Health and Safety Act in work place.
Among other things, they had taken no steps to ensure that unsafe modified throttle assemblies were not used when testing with combustible gases.
They had also failed to ensure that there was a system for accurate tracking of gas cylinders.
On Tuesday, the prosecutor for the Ministry of Human Resources, Erdiana Hazlina, said that Ms Lim was conducting a gas analysis in a cylinder shortly before the explosion occurred.
Lim was last seen touching a regulating valve assembly (RVA) attached to a cylinder, the court heard.
Ms Erdiana added: “Said RVA was found to have been modified with an unqualified brazed joint. Brazed joint failure … was found to exist previously, but was not prudently verified prior to use prior to the incident.
“Unqualified solder joint failure … resulted in a flammable methane-oxygen-nitrogen mixture leaking from the RVA during cylinder testing.”
The court heard that the escaping gas mixture could have been ignited by the frictional heat generated by the escaping gas mixture.
An explosion occurred and the resulting fire engulfed the ground floor laboratory. Officers from the Singapore Civil Defense Force were then deployed to the site.
Ms Lim’s charred remains were later found six times over a two-month period. They were identified using their daughter’s DNA.
In 2016, then-State Coroner Marvin Bay discovered that Ms. Lim died from blast injuries. He also found his death to be an industrial misfortune.
On Tuesday, Erdiana urged the court to sentence Leeden National Oxygen to a fine of $ 380,000. He also lobbied for Tham to be fined $ 50,000.
Both offenders are expected to be sentenced on January 12 of next year.
For committing the crime under the law, a business can be fined up to $ 500,000, while a person can be imprisoned for up to two years and fined up to $ 200,000.
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