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SINGAPORE – Two supervisors were sentenced to prison on Wednesday (September 23) for committing negligent acts that endangered the safety of workers at a workplace near Changi Airport, resulting in the death of a Bangladeshi worker. in 2017.
Tan Wee Meng, 44, a Workplace Health and Safety Officer (WSHO), was jailed for two months, while Lee Chung Ling, 48, a project manager, received three months in jail under the Workplace Safety and Health Act.
In a statement on Thursday (September 24), the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said that Tan had not helped constructor Chan and Chan Engineering identify and assess risks in work processes. It also did not conduct on-site risk assessments or recommend measures to eliminate them.
Lee, appointed by Chan and Chan, was found to be negligent in reviewing work processes at the site and in appointing a supervisor for formwork activities.
It also did not approve risk assessments and safe work procedures for the use of metal module formwork in the workplace, and did not ensure that control measures were implemented in the risk assessment for the works, the MOM said.
The job site near Changi Airport was for a service road between Terminals 2 and 4 that included, among other things, the construction of a conduit for high voltage cables.
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 lifting the formwork for the construction of the high voltage cable duct.
He was using a hammer to adjust a horizontal wooden bracket to hold two metal plates when the bracket slid off, causing one of the plates to fall inward and hit his chest. He was rushed to Changi General Hospital, where he died.
In September 2018, Chan and Chan were fined $ 150,000 for failing to take reasonably practicable steps to ensure the safety and health of their employees.
Tan and Lee pleaded guilty to their crimes on August 20, but were sentenced on Wednesday (September 23).
Prosecutors had previously stated in their filings that because Lee did not review the working methods, the workers did not have a specific method for constructing the forms. They had to resort to an unsafe method, putting themselves in danger.
For his part, Tan had not realized that the workers on Mr. Miah’s team were deploying an unsafe and unauthorized method of constructing the steel plate form during safety inspections of the site.
“Both defendants had extensive obligations under Chan and Chan’s safety management system. Lee, as project manager, was in overall charge of the workplace, site work, and safety. Just like WSHO, it was the company’s top adviser for workplace safety and there was an important role to play with regard to workplace safety, “said MOM prosecutors Mohd Rizal and Mohd Fadhli in the filings.
They also revealed that these were not single isolated incidents of non-compliance, as multiple non-compliance had occurred over an extended period, from October 2016 to March 2017.
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