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Oral Answer by Mr Sam Tan Minister of State for Manpower to Parliamentary Question on WSH Incident Reporting Regulation

Workplace safety and health

NOTICE PAPER NO. 1068 OF 2018 FOR THE SITTING ON 19 FEB 2018
QUESTION NO. 1834 FOR ORAL ANSWER

MP: Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang

To ask the Minister for Manpower (a) what is the number of workplace injuries reported in the past five years; and (b) whether the Ministry will consider adopting a system of workplace injury reporting based on (i) diagnosis of a specified list of common work-related injuries requiring medical treatment and (ii) requirement of treatment in a hospital without any time threshold such as used in the US (Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970), Australia (Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004) and the UK (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013).

Answer

  1. Under the Workplace Safety and Health (Incident Reporting) Regulations, it is mandatory for employers to report work related accidents where the employee was given more than three days of sick leave, or hospitalised for at least 24 hours. In the last five years, an average of about 12,800 such workplace injuries were reported to MOM each year. The number has been stable over this period.
  2. Our reporting criteria are aligned to international practices which focus on reporting injuries that are more serious. In fact, ours is similar to that of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). It also requires reporting of any injury that results in more than three days of sick leave. The reporting regimes in other countries also do not require all injuries to be reported. For example in the UK, beyond the prescribed list of reportable injuries, such as fractures, amputations, burns or blindness, all other injuries are only reportable if the sick leave is seven days or more. The UK also requires the injury to be reportable if it results in hospitalisation for more than 24 hours.
  3. Our criteria of more than three days sick leave and hospitalisation for more 24 hours would already cover the serious injuries that other jurisdiction deem reportable. Hence, our regime is just as robust as the other developed countries.