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By Ian Tan Hanhonn
Senior Minister of State for Manpower (MOM) Zaqy Mohamad has announced the establishment of a new $4 million grant which will help co-fund the installation of a Stability Control System (SCS) for lorry cranes.
He was speaking at the Workplace Safety and Health Symposium on Cranes 2023, held on 16 January 2023 at the NTUC Stephen Riady Auditorium.
The SCS can help minimise accidents by preventing the overloading of lorry cranes and thus reducing the odds of vehicle toppling.
"The grant will fund 70 per cent of qualifying costs, capped at $7,000 per lorry crane and $20,000 per company,” he shared.
The grant will be open to sectors and businesses from March 2023 and will be available for application until March 2025.
He further advised companies to leverage technology and innovations such as the SCS to improve WSH outcomes.
Of the 46 workplace fatalities that occurred in 2022, six involved the use of cranes, of which two occurred in December.
One involved a worker performing rigging work despite not being trained. The other involved a worker being struck by a crane boom.
There were also 15 dangerous occurrences recorded in 2022 involving cranes – compared to four cases in 2021.
"These are incidents that may not have any injury but have the potential for multiple casualties,” said Mr Zaqy.
Meanwhile, Mr Zaqy has urged companies to ensure that workers are trained to perform the tasks that they are assigned to do.
He said: "This is the basic legal requirement of the Workplace Safety and Health Act.
If they are not trained, they must not perform these high-risk tasks. They [will] put everyone in danger.”
He added that the ministry would apply enforcement against employers who deploy workers to do high-risk jobs they are not trained to handle.
The workplace fatality rate in 2022 was 1.3 per 100,000 workers.
This was higher than the previous year, which recorded 1.1 workplace fatalities per 100,000 workers.
Mr Zaqy shared that the Heightened Safety Period (HSP) – imposed to stem the number of workplace accidents – did yield positive results.
The Government is considering extending the HSP beyond the end of February – the original proposed end date of the initiative, he added.
During the HSP, over 600 composition fines amounting to over $1.3 million were issued since September 2022.