PETALING JAYA, June 8 — One of the two escalators at a mall in Bagan Serai, where a three-year-old was injured on Monday, did not have a certificate of fitness, said the Department of Occupational Safety and Health Malaysia (DOSH) 

Its director-general, Datuk Mohtar Musri, said this was based on reports from his officers in Perak.

Investigations would be completed today. 

“My officers found one of the escalators had a certificate. The other certificate had expired in March but they switched on that escalator as well,” he said.

“We have records of the escalators but in this case, the escalator was left idle. Our records show it was not in service.”

He said there were 11,600 escalators registered nationwide

About 10 per cent of them lay idle.

He said legal action would be taken if the mall’s management did not have the certification of fitness. 

Mohtar was commenting on a case where a three-year-old boy was injured after his genitals were caught between the steps of an escalator at a shopping centre in Bagan Serai on Monday.

A Fire and Rescue Department spokesman said it received a distress call at 8.16pm and when they reached the scene, they used a crowbar to force open the escalator steps to free the boy. He was later rushed to a nearest hospital for treatment.

Mohtar said the onus was on the owner to tell the department it wanted to operate the escalator again and get it inspected by their officers.

All escalators have to be designed, installed and maintained according to the standards set in the Factories and Machinery Act 1967.

“According to the legal requirement, each escalator has a certificate of fitness and will be issued after an officer inspects it. The certificate is valid for 15 months. They need to renew the certificate and this will be issued after it is certified fit.”

He said another requirement was that the owner must engage a maintenance company to carry out inspection twice a month.

Mohtar said parents needed to be more attentive to their children near escalators and not to leave them running around.

“An escalator is just like any other equipment. If it is well maintained and safe, it also must be used safely,” he said.

“If you go to malls, you can see children left unattended, so when it comes to safety, it is up to the public, especially parents.”

This was not the first escalator-related incident involving children.

Last month, a toddler was injured after his hand got stuck in an escalator at the KL International Airport and in February, a three-year-old had part of his foot severed after a similar incident at KL Sentral.

A boy got his foot stuck in an escalator panel at a mall in Kuala Lumpur last November while a 15-month-old toddler lost his right hand June last year, after it got caught in an escalator at KL Sentral.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye said parents and public must play a proactive role in monitoring and educating children not to treat escalators as playgrounds.

“Otherwise, we will continue hearing of such cases and they usually do not end well,” he said.