Tragically, there were 10 fatal workplace accidents in April 2022 alone. You may find the links to the 4 published accidents article below:
- 4 April 2022 – Three workers fell from scaffold
- 14 April 2022 – Engineer dies after falling through false ceiling
- 21 April 2022 – Serious Accident Incident Mobile Crane Overturned
- 30 April 2022 – One Worker dies after falling from ladder, Two workers injured when boom lift fail
For subsequent updates of the remaining 4 articles, you may refer to the WSHC website under “WSH Alerts”.
This is an alarming spate of workplace fatal accidents, which is more than double the average pre-Covid level. The WSH Council and ASPRI are jointly calling on members to conduct a Safety Time Out (STO) at a suitable date between 9 and 20 May.
An STO means allocating a period to down tools, review your risk assessment, take WSH improvement actions and communicate this to all workers, before resuming work. Improvement actions can take various forms, including (but not limited to) the following:
For top management:
- Do a walk-about on site to encourage workers to report safety risks and near misses to their supervisors. Ask workers to surface their safety concerns, if any, and reassure them that they will not be penalised for doing so. Emphasise to the supervisors and site/project managers that they are responsible to resolve these risks.
- Share learning points from recent fatal accidents from the WSH Alerts, with all workers, to avoid a repeat of such cases in your own company.
- Share resource kits on ladder and forklift accidents to make workers aware of high-risk activities that have led to a number of workplace deaths recently.
For WSH personnel:
- Assign mentors to new workers, as those with less than 3 years or working experience in Singapore tend to be more accident-prone than their more experienced peers; guide them closely especially in doing high-risk activities.
- Identify any new risks that were not factored into the Risk Assessment, and devise control measures to mitigate these risks.
- Ensure that the control measures in the company’s Risk Assessment are being implemented.
- Hold workshops or meetings with employees to recap basic site safety, and how employees can play a part in upholding good WSH standards.
To guide our members in implementing the STO, you can refer to the WSH Council’s resources, including a Safety Time Out checklist and other information, which can be found on the WSH Council’s website HERE. We would appreciate if you could indicate your commitment to conducting the STO through the association secretariat at admin@aspri.com.sg (Attention: Wynn).