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Workplace Safety and Health (Amendment Bill) 2011 2nd Reading Speech by Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Manpower, 11 April 2011, 5.00pm, Parliament

Workplace safety and health

Background
 

  1. Sir, in 2005, my Ministry undertook a comprehensive review of our workplace safety and health (WSH) legislation to improve safety outcomes. The review resulted in the enactment of the Workplace Safety and Health Act which came into force in 2006, replacing the Factories Act. The Act was crafted based on three key principles – reducing risks at source, engendering industry ownership of WSH outcomes, and preventing accidents through higher penalties for poor safety management.
  2. Our WSH statistics indicate that these improvements to our WSH framework have borne fruit. Our workplace fatality rate had declined from 4.9 fatalities per 100,000 workers in 2004 to its lowest level in six years of 2.2 last year, a decrease of more than 55 percent. We have also seen a similar decrease in the workplace injury rate.

    Extension of the WSH Act
  3. When the WSH Bill was first introduced in 2005, we said then that our intention was to extend the legislation to eventually cover all workplaces, rather than only factories as defined by the Factories Act. All workers would then receive the protection they deserve against safety and health risks at the workplace. To give industry time to adjust, we had been extending the coverage of the WSH Act in stages. In 2008, following consultations with the industry, we extended the Act to six additional sectors, including healthcare, hotels and restaurants, and transportation of goods. We are now ready to do more.
  4. Clause 2 of this Bill seeks to extend the coverage of the Act to all remaining workplaces. With this amendment, workplaces in another 14 sectors, ranging from wholesale and retail trade, public administration to administrative and support services, will now be brought under the ambit of the Act. These sectors account for more than 100,000 organisations employing more than 1.6 million workers, or almost 60 percent of the workforce in Singapore. We intend to exempt occupiers of domestic premises from the Act unless the occupier himself is using the premises for a business undertaking.
  5. With the extension, stakeholders in these newly included workplaces will have a general duty of care to take "reasonably practicable" measures to ensure the safety and health of workers and others who may be affected by their work. The term "reasonably practicable" means that stakeholders need only take preventive measures which are proportionate to the potential impact of the hazards at the workplace. In addition, stakeholders will also need to comply with Regulations under the WSHA that are relevant to their work activities. These include requirements for risk management and incident reporting, which apply to all workplaces covered by the Act. There are also regulations that deal with specific hazards such as excessive noise, confined spaces, the use of hazardous chemicals, etc. that stakeholders must comply with if their work involves such hazards.

    Efforts to reach out to stakeholders
  6. To prepare for the extension of the coverage of the Act, since March 2010, my Ministry and the Workplace Safety and Health Council have stepped up our efforts to educate stakeholders in the new sectors on their roles and responsibilities under the Act and the measures they can take to raise WSH standards at the workplace. To educate workers and members of the public on protecting themselves from common WSH hazards in the new sectors, we launched an outreach campaign in July 2010. Members may have seen some of the advertisements at our MRT stations or bus stops featuring everyday risks at work such as slips, trips and falls. In November 2010, we also published a guidebook on managing these common hazards and sent this to all the employers in these sectors. To provide more targeted advice and assistance to employers, we have also held several sessions of WSH Clinics over the last eight months, where employers receive free advice from WSH professionals on managing WSH risks at their workplaces. More than 800 employers have sought advice at these clinics. We will continue with these educational efforts, for example, through the National WSH Campaign 2011 to be launched later this month.

    Scoping the definition of a "Factory"
  7. When the coverage of the WSH Act, and its predecessor the Factories Act, was limited to workplaces deemed to be "factories", the definition of the term "factory" was deliberately crafted broadly to cover a wider range of workplaces. This broad definition meant that hawker stalls and tailor shops could be considered factories.
  8. With the extension of the coverage of the Act to all workplaces, this broad definition of "factories" is no longer necessary. We will instead redefine "factories" to refer to higher risk workplaces whose activities present a higher potential for serious accidents so that these workplaces will be subject to more stringent regulation; such as notifying or registering with MOM before commencing operations; and forming a WSH committee. Clause 4 of the Bill defines a "factory" to include five broad categories of work activities that we have identified to be of higher risk, such as building operations and the manufacturing of hazardous substances. The Fourth Schedule lists 19 classes of workplaces falling under these five categories that we deem to be "factories". This revised definition will enable us to focus our efforts on higher risk workplaces such as shipyards, construction sites, manufacturing plants, etc to achieve greater effectiveness.

    Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders
  9. We have also taken this opportunity to clarify the roles and responsibilities of principals and persons at work under the Act.

    Duties of principals in relation to their contractors
  10. Section 14 of the existing Act covers principals who engage contractors for specialised tasks or engage the services of workers from third-party labour suppliers. Some principals are involved in directing the work of the contractors they hire as well as their workers, and they effectively take on the role similar to that of an employer in terms of supervision. For these principals, the Act places a duty on them to ensure the safety and health of these workers. These duties are similar to those of an employer.
  11. However, even if principals are not involved in directing the work of his contractors, he should still be required to exercise reasonable care to ensure the safety of the workers. Clause 5 of the Bill will require all principals to ensure that any contractor they engage is able to carry out the work safely, whether these contractors work under their direction or not. This duty on principals is not an onerous one. The new Section 14A requires principals to take only such measures that are "reasonably practicable", which takes into account the level of knowledge and expertise that the principal could reasonably be expected to possess. To provide stakeholders with some clarity on what such measures would entail, Sections 14A(2) and 14A(3) state that such measures would include ascertaining that the contractor and his employees have sufficient experience and training to carry out the work, and that the contractor has conducted a risk assessment on the safety and health risks posed by the work.
  12. For example, a principal who engages a contractor to repair his roof should minimally verify that the contractor and his employees have been trained to work safely at heights, including the proper use of the necessary fall prevention equipment. The principal should also be satisfied that the contractor has conducted a risk assessment to identify the risks involved and the measures to mitigate such risks. A principal who himself can be expected to possess expertise for the work that he has contracted out will be held to a higher standard. For instance, if the principal is also a contractor himself, he would be expected to assess whether the risk assessment conducted by the contractor is adequate and if need be, let the contractor know what risks have not been adequately addressed. As with other stakeholders under the Act such as employers and occupiers, principals who fail to discharge these new duties with due diligence can be subject to the maximum penalties allowed under WSHA, that is, a maximum fine of $200,000 for individuals and $500,000 for businesses.

    Duties of persons at work for negligence
  13. For persons at work, Clause 6 of this Bill will allow the Ministry to take to task those workers who acted negligently in the workplace and in doing so, endangered the safety and health of themselves or of others. I would like to stress that this is not a new offence per se. The Government can and has taken individuals to task for endangering the safety of themselves or of others at the workplace through a negligent act under the Penal Code. For example, in 2008, a chief engineer of a tanker was convicted and fined $7,000 for a negligent act resulting in two divers being injured. The engineer had neglected to confirm that the diving operations under the propeller had been completed before starting the tanker's engines.
  14. We can already take other stakeholders – such as the employer or occupier – to task for negligence under the WSHA. The proposed amendment merely seeks to make the WSHA more consistent internally, to allow us to take all responsible stakeholders to task for negligence under the same piece of legislation, rather than to rely on the Penal Code for persons at work. The penalties for the new Section 15(3A) are aligned to those under Section 304A of the Penal Code for causing death by a negligent act and are capped at a fine of $30,000, a jail term of 2 years or both.

    Enhance MOM's powers of investigation
  15. This Bill also seeks to enhance MOM's powers of investigation for diseases contracted as a result of occupational exposures to chemical or biological hazards. Currently, MOM only has the power to investigate incidences of diseases that are specified in the Third Schedule of the Act. The Schedule lists only diseases that have a well-established link to work, such as hydrogen sulphide poisoning and occupational skin diseases. However, we need to ensure that MOM can investigate and take action against any lapses at the workplace that could expose workers to a chemical or biological hazard and could adversely impact their health but which may not have a direct link to the diseases specified in the Schedule. Clause 3(b) therefore expands the definition of an "occupational disease" (OD) under the Act, to include not only diseases listed under the Schedule of ODs, but also diseases resulting from occupational exposures to any chemical or biological agents.
  16. Finally, the Bill also makes some technical amendments, by removing obsolete references to "factory permit(s)", which are no longer used following the Ministry's review in 2008 of the factory registration system. Clauses 3(b), 8 and 11 effect the changes in this regard.

    Conclusion
  17. In conclusion, Sir, I would like to thank our tripartite partners, including the industry and professional associations, and the members of the public for their support in our WSH journey to date, and for their valuable feedback and suggestions on these Act amendments. The progress we have made over the past 6 years would not have been possible without their strong commitment and support. I look forward to working with them on the next leg of our WSH journey, in our efforts to realise our national target of bringing our workplace fatality rate to below 1.8 per 100,000 workers by 2018.
  18. Sir, I beg to move.