Workplace safety in Singapore: Name and shame our way to the top

NOT one to take half measures in anything it embarks on, Singapore has set itself the aim of no less than among the world's best - now in the area of workplace safety and health (WSH) as well.

And in this instance, there's nothing vainglorious about the pursuit, but rather an entirely desirable and praiseworthy goal. Better late than never too, seeing as there were 41 deaths from workplace injuries last year, just one fewer than the year before, with the construction sector reporting the most fatalities - 14 in 2018, two more than in 2017. Adding to the sad statistics, already in barely the first 70 days of 2019 there had been four reported deaths from worksite-related incidents, the victims all foreign workers. Singapore's WSH record may have improved over the years - its three-year average fatal workplace injury rate has fallen from 2.6 per 100,000 workers in 2010 to 1.4 in 2018, earning it a 7th-place ranking compared to OECD countries. But every new case of worksite death, indeed every major injury, is a strong reminder that it's not all hunky-dory on the workplace safety front, and should serve as a warning about the consequences of safety lapses, if not negligence. In 2017, 90 per cent of the 74 machinery-related incidents in the manufacturing, construction and marine sectors - a leading cause of major injuries at the workplace - resulted in amputation.

In line with the overall goal, the plan to, as it were, "name and shame" errant employers with a poor safety record and hit them where it matters - as proposed by a panel tasked with coming up with 10-year strategies on WSH practices - is the way to go. The need to strengthen WSH ownership, and ensure WSH matters in business decisions - including sharing the list of disqualified construction firms with private developers, and providing work injury compensation claims data with insurers so that premiums can be adjusted according to a firm's safety record - is particularly pertinent for employers that (unfortunately and quite egregiously) see WSH as an obligatory cost rather than simply good practice. If such employers aren't driven by values (or regulatory requirements) to build a WSH culture, they might hopefully be motivated by impact to their bottomline.