SINGAPORE, July 17 — A manufacturer of metal tins and containers has been charged for its role in relation to two workplace fatalities that happened four years ago, while a former factory manager has been fined for allowing the accidents to happen.

Yesterday, MC Packaging was charged under the Workplace Safety and Health Act for failing to ensure the safety and health of employees at work.

The company is alleged to have failed to:

  • Conduct and implement adequate risk assessment for work involving the cleaning of a machine
  • Implement safe work procedures, including an effective lock-out and tag-out procedure, which would have ensured machines and equipment are disconnected from a power source before they are inspected or maintained
  • Provide adequate supervision
  • Fix safety guards to the moving parts of a machine
  • Conduct an adequate risk assessment and safe work procedures for forklift-related activities
  • Implement a traffic management plan within the factory

The case will be heard again in court on August 18.

Separately, the company’s factory manager Hew Poh Leong was fined S$1,900 (RM5,827.62) after he pleaded guilty on the same day to two charges of failing to carry out his duties to ensure his employer complied with the Act.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said in a statement yesterday that Hew, 48, did not ensure that the company’s safe work procedures were being followed, which led to the first death. He also did not escalate a traffic management plan to his employer, which resulted in the second death.

First accident

Court documents showed that the first accident at MC Packaging happened on the morning of June 16, 2016 at a unit handling milk powder tin cans.

There was a palletiser machine, a device that automates the stacking of products onto a pallet.

A 33-year-old female Chinese national, who had been hired to operate the machine, was cleaning it with a co-worker.

She was on the second level of the machine when her co-worker, who was on the ground level, used a compressed air gun to blow out dust from one of the machine’s components.

Investigations found that the air gun, which used the same compressed air supply line as the palletiser, had caused the machine’s plunger structural frame to move upwards into a locked position.

The 33-year-old worker happened to be standing in a position on the machine that resulted in her upper body getting trapped between the plunger and a portion of the machine’s frame.

The woman, who was found bleeding from her nose, was taken to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital where she died from her injuries later that day. 

Investigations found, among other things, that aside from working unsupervised, both the deceased and her co-worker were unaware of the company’s safety procedures that prohibited workers from climbing into the machine while cleaning it.

Furthermore, they also did not ensure that the machine had been disconnected from a power source.

Second accident

The second accident happened at around 11.30am on Dec 26, 2016.

A female employee of the company, whose age and nationality were not stated in court documents, had just finished her lunch and was walking across the production floor when she was struck by a reversing forklift driven by one Subramaniam Suppaiyya.

The woman was taken to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital where she died from a head injury two days later.

Findings from the investigations revealed that, among other things, the company did not review its safety procedures for work involving forklifts, even though four other forklift-related accidents had happened before, including one in June that year.

Two of these four accidents took place in the first quarter of 2015 and they involved forklifts driven by Mr Subramaniam.

MOM said that under the provisions of the Work Injury Compensation Act, the families of both deceased workers have each received compensation of around S$200,000.

The Workplace Safety and Health Act mandates that it is the responsibility of every employer to ensure the safety and health of employees. Failure to do so could result in a fine of up to S$500,000.

For the charge of failing to ensure that his employers comply with the Act, Hew could have been fined up to S$2,000. — TODAY