Citizen Nades - Can you put a price on human lives?

IN 1991, the Petaling Jaya Municipal Council as it was then known approved the renovation of a five-storey building along Jalan Semangat. When council officials visited the site, they found that it had six floors. The council decided that the owner could keep the extra floor but imposed a compound fine of RM6,000.
Twenty-five years later, an application was made, this time to the City Council, to tear down the building and put a new one in its place. Midway through bulldozing the building, seven people died.
The construction companies involved and a director received light fines after pleading guilty for failing to ensure workers' safety during the demolition.
The main contractor was fined RM20,000 while the subcontractor was fined RM12,000 by the sessions court. One director was fined RM5,000 for exposing his workers to safety risks.
Last week, a 24-year-old woman died when the sheave hook of an overhead crane at a building under construction landed on her car in Jalan Raja Chulan near a shopping complex. Chin Khoon Sing, 24, was found pinned inside the wrecked car when rescue personnel arrived at the scene soon after the 7.15pm incident.
The Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) has issued a stop-work order and launched an investigation to establish whether those responsible for the site's safety had been negligent. Legal action, it said, would be taken if any foul play is proven.
After the news broke, Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye issued a statement in his capacity as the chairman of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
He said it was very clear that the accident was caused by negligence of public safety and the crane operator and contractor should be held entirely responsible.
"Action must be taken. Blacklist them. This is not the first time such accidents have happened, but this time it has claimed the life of an innocent road user," thundered Lee.
MCA chief Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, who is also transport minister, came out with a scathing statement. He wants authorities to track down and detain the crane operator, who had fled the scene.
The driver has been identified as an Indonesian.
"The contractor and company that supplied the crane must be hauled up too. We also want the relevant authorities concerned to come up with some explanations," Liow said in a statement.
Prevention is better than cure. How often does DOSH carry out on-site inspections? How often have we seen workers on lofts without proper attire and harnesses?
We see such instances when we drive around the city, but the authorities don't see or don't want to see such dereliction of basic safety regulations. Besides, with so much construction, does the department have enough officers to carry out inspections?
Then what about the penalties? As we have seen in the case of the building in Petaling Jaya, those responsible admitted their failures and got away with a paltry fine for seven lives lost. Hasn't the time come for a review of the laws and the penalties?
In the UK, major companies convicted of corporate manslaughter face fines of up to £20 million (about RM106 million) under new sentencing guidelines which came into force this year. Unveiled by the Sentencing Council, it suggest that judges should impose fines in relation to the size of the convicted organisation.
Under the Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act 2007, there is no upper limit on penalties. The £20 million fine level will be for firms with an annual turnover of more than £50 million, and up to £10 million for fatal health and safety offences.
Fine levels, the Sentencing Council said, should be large enough to have an economic impact that would bring home to an organisation the importance of operating in a safe environment. The guidelines are being strengthened because existing sanctions were felt to be too low to act as a deterrent. Judges and magistrates can still impose punishments outside the recommended range if they believe they are dealing with an exceptional case.
For individuals found guilty of a breach of duty to their employees, the guidelines say judges can send company managers or directors to prison for up to two years in the most serious cases.
Corporate manslaughter and health and safety offences may involve incidents such as a pedestrian killed by falling scaffolding, a gas leak caused by an unregistered gas fitter or an employee injured by faulty machinery. Food safety offences may include outbreaks of food poisoning caused by a restaurant with poor hygiene standards or a takeaway infested with cockroaches.
In one UK case, Jagpal Singh had been working in and around two large skips in Wolverhampton, accessible only via a metal ladder on the side, in order to rearrange garden rubbish for compression.
Jagpal fell eight feet from the top of a skip. The manager of Bilston Skips, Bikram Singh Mahli, was operating an excavator to compress the contents of the skip. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment suspended for two years. The company, which is now in liquidation, was fined £600,000.
To prevent workplace accidents, first, we need the laws to be enforced. Second, the penalties for breach of the laws must act as a deterrent. Paying RM37,000 out of a RM10 million project is peanuts.
And finally, custodial sentences must be imposed on those responsible. In this instance, for a start, the site manager or human resource manager, who employed a foreigner as the crane operator, must be put on the mat. His superior who endorsed the employment must also be penalised.
Let us put some fright into these categories of people that there's no price that can be put on human beings.
R. Nadeswaran says accidents are waiting to happen in some worksites where corners are cut at the expense of safety. Comments: citizen-nades@thesundaily.com