AUG 6 — Recently a Malaysian fell to his death in yet another construction incident. As the project is a high-profile government project and the incident occurred within public plain sight, there is no way this incident goes under the radar.
In this country, there seem to be a disparity of reactions from both authority and public alike of such victims, depending on whether they are locals or foreigners. I’d acknowledge, I was doubly unnerved by the fact that he is a Malaysian professional, just out and about on a normal day at work. There’s a certain acuteness to the tragedy imagining that the victim could have been myself or one of my colleagues, ourselves being building professionals. Yet this visceral reaction shouldn’t be the case: all lives matter, Malaysian or not.
Globally, the construction industry is already suffering from an industry-specific inertia towards digitalisation and technology adoption. In Malaysia, I believe we suffer from an additional layer of challenge: apathy.
The reasons are multi-fold. In the first place, construction itself has never been a particularly sexy subject, rarely making lively conversations for media or pop culture. For most people, so long as projects get completed in the end and profits remain unthreatened, a little compensation here and there is sufficient to “gaodim” (settle up) most grievances. All these add up to create an effect of a deafening silence and tremendous apathy towards construction fatality rates. Which by the way, at a rate of 1.2 fatalities every two days as estimated by MBAM in a 2018 report, is disconcerting. DOSH’s 2018 Occupational Accidents Statistics by Sector report shows Construction taking the prize as bearing the highest death count amongst all. Some might read this and probably think, “why should this be surprising?”. But I appeal to you, think about these crazy numbers again and imagine going to work having to hear of a person in your field dropping dead every few months, that is the reality of employment in the industry.
A cursory scroll down DOSH’s listing of “Fatal Accident Case” in its website conveys little information on investigation outcomes or legal ramifications of the reported incidents. Are we so desensitised to fatality in construction, that we don’t feel the need to learn from these failures or even follow up with due course of justice?
Our national statistics on construction deaths may have been downright appalling for the longest of times, but they shouldn’t be normalised. Remaining silent equates partaking in the daily slaughter of our builders. Are we to take pride in the fact that our homes, railways and workplaces are built on the senseless deaths, mostly preventable, of our workforce? This apathy to death by construction clearly compounds the problem itself, by licensing bad practices and gross neglect by industry players. Afterall it is convenient to blame the nature of the job. But as a member of the industry, I dare say that construction itself isn’t dangerous. What is truly dangerous is the toxic combination of weak regulation, industry wide corruption and the ultimate cherry on the cake, society’s apathy, that is truly dangerous.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
