Pre-recorded Address at SISO Workplace Safety and Health Officers' Conference 2024

Mr. Bernard Lew, President of the Singapore Institution of Safety Officers or SISO

Ladies and gentlemen

1. Good morning! While I cannot attend this event in person, I’m heartened that we have over 500 participants at the conference this year. This shows your strong support for workplace safety and health, or WSH in short.

    

   Singapore’s WSH journey – progress and achievements

2. Singapore’s recent WSH performance has been commendable, with the fatal injury rate holding steady at 1.0 per 100,000 workers from 2023 to the first half of 2024. Only four OECD countries have consistently achieved this.

    

3. All of you, our WSH officers on the ground, played a big part in this incredible achievement. Thank you for ensuring that your colleagues uphold safety practices and for encouraging your bosses to invest in safety. Collectively, we will have to stay vigilant and continue improving and evolving our WSH practices to manage both current and emerging challenges. WSH professionals like yourselves must lead the way in navigating these challenges.

    

   Tackle existing WSH challenges - mandatory refresher training for forklift operators

    

4. First, in areas of known risks, we must continue to monitor trends and assess if our measures need refreshing. One such area is forklift safety, which remains a key contributor of incidents across multiple industries. From 2022 to 2023, vehicular incidents were the leading cause of fatal injuries in the workplace. 25% of these vehicular fatalities were contributed by forklifts. During the same period, MOM’s investigations and inspections also uncovered that close to 80% of forklift-related contraventions involved experienced forklift operators who had not undergone forklift refresher training. They were found to be operating forklifts unsafely and posed risks to themselves and other co-workers.

    

5. To continually reinforce the safety awareness and behaviours of forklift operators, we will be introducing a mandatory refresher training for all forklift operators once every 3 years after they completed their first training. It will cover topics like safety regulations, Do’s and Don’ts for forklift operations, and common safety lapses and their consequences.

    

6. More details of this new training requirement will be released later, but we know there are already progressive employers providing refresher training to their forklift operators. One such company is CWT Integrated Pte Ltd, which requires all its forklift operators to attend regular refresher training. In fact, such regular training has also enabled CWT to upskill its forklift operators to handle more advanced forklift models, this in turn improves business productivity  

    

   Emerging WSH challenges – erratic and adverse weather 

7. Second, we have to manage new WSH risks in a more complex operating environment. One area that we experienced recently is erratic and adverse weather. These extreme weather events may derail your work schedules, damage infrastructure, and injure workers. It is imperative that companies and WSH professionals come together to review your risk assessments, and prepare, communicate, and implement recovery plans for such events. MOM and WSH Council had recently issued an advisory to guide companies in this area.