Indian-origin man charged for safety lapse-related accidental death in Singapore

Singapore, Mar 29 (PTI) A 60-year-old Indian-origin man, along with a Chinese-origin colleague, was charged over safety lapses that caused a security officer's death in 2019 at a rooftop bar here.
     Suresh Kumar Shanmugam and Philip Lim Keng Liang, 42, were each handed one charge on Tuesday under the Workplace Safety and Health Act, and their cases were adjourned to April 18, The Straits Times newspaper reported.
     The duo was charged with safety lapses that led to the death of a 26-year-old part-time security officer, Shaun Tung Mun Hon, who fell into a 4-metre-deep pit at the bar on June 9, 2019, the report said.
     At the time of the tragedy, Shanmugam was a freelance facade cleaning worker at the 1-Altitude rooftop bar at One Raffles Place, a 63-storey building in the Central Business District of the city-state, the report said.
     Shanmugam failed to reinstate some floor slabs on the 63rd storey of the building, which he and other workers had removed to access a gondola pit, leaving behind a floor opening that people could fall through, according to the report.
     Liang was an operations manager at housekeeping, conservancy and cleaning contractor A&P Maintenance Services at the time of the incident.
     According to court documents, Liang failed to take adequate steps to address the risk of people falling into the uncovered floor opening of the gondola pit at the bar located in the skyscraper.
     The then State Coroner Ponnampalam noted earlier that the accident could have been avoided if safety standards had been observed.
     In March 2020, three firms and three men were hauled to court over the alleged safety lapses that led to the tragedy.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)