SINGAPORE: A shipyard operator was fined S$200,000 on Thursday (Oct 27) in relation to the death of a worker who died after he was hit by a forklift in 2019.
On May 26, 2019, 30 year-old Bangladeshi painter and blaster Rahman Zillur was assigned to work on Asia Pacific Shipyard’s (APS) site.
“Rahman was walking along a slipway when a forklift transporting a blasting pot to the shipyard’s storage area suddenly accelerated forward, crashed through a guardrail and fell into the slipway,” the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said in a press release.
“The forklift struck Rahman, and he died at the scene from his injuries.”
The worker operating the forklift, Shanmugam Sivarasu, was sentenced on Jul 21 to 11 months’ jail, said MOM. He had operated the forklift without any training, while knowing the machine’s brakes were faulty.
“His reckless act directly caused the death of Rahman,” said MOM.
The supervisor in charge of the team working at the site, Yeduvaka Mali Naidu, was on Aug 10 sentenced to 11 months’ jail after the prosecution’s appeal.
He had allowed the untrained Shanmugam to operate forklifts on multiple occasions despite knowing that he was not certified, trained nor competent to do so, the Manpower Ministry said.
“In addition, he was also aware that the brakes of the forklifts were faulty, but he still used the faulty forklifts and allowed the untrained Shanmugam to do so,” MOM said.