Consulting with TWC2 president Debbie Fordyce
“When did the insurance company interview you?” we ask Hulyah (name changed), a Bangladeshi construction worker in Singapore. “How many months after the accident?”
“About six months after the accident,” he replies.
This doesn’t sound good. It’s too long. Too many things can happen in the meantime that can jeopardise an injury compensation claim.
We probe further and indeed, many things did happen in Hulyah’s case. This story then takes shape: illustrating how, despite the social protection intent of the legislation, the operating model allows so much leeway to parties with conflict of interest, it works against the very purpose of the Work Injury Compensation Act (Wica).
As a piece of social protection legislation, Wica is meant to provide a speedy, low-cost method to ensure that workers injured in the course of work are given timely medical care and necessary financial support. The latter includes compensation both for temporary incapacity (colloquially known as MC wages) and for permanent incapacity (also known as disability compensation).
However, the operating rules give much latitude to employers and insurers; they can drag the process out, in which time evidence can be lost or tampered with. It so happens (no surprise) that insurers’ interest is to not pay. Those employers who don’t have employees’ interests at heart are also happy that no claim is filed or the claim is ruled invalid. These parties’ interests are served by delays or by setting the threshold of proof as high as possible. From time to time, TWC2 has even seen cases where the worker says the evidence was interfered with.
At a workplace, regulations count for nothing
Hulyah recalls that it all started on the morning of 1 December 2023. Working for a renovation company, he was carrying 50-kg bags of cement from the lorry to the worksite.
“You go for safety course, maximum how much you are supposed to carry?” we ask him. The answer is 25 kg. The safety course we’re referring to is the mandatory Construction Safety Orientation Course (SOC) at the start of every construction worker’s career. But employers are often quick to fire any worker who refuses to do as told, even if it is against the safety rules. So workers like Hulyah find it impossible to say no and rules are not translated into reality. “Workplace, ah, cannot follow regulation,” Hulyah says.
At the same time, we wonder if Hulyah is exaggerating, and probe how he knew the bags were 50 kg each. “Writing have,” explains Hulyah. The cement is in paper sacks, and the weight was clearly printed on them, we are told.
Because they were paper sacks, he goes on to explain, putting each sack down was the hardest part. He couldn’t throw them down as the paper packaging might burst. So he had to twist and bend to lower the sacks gently. And that was how it happened. As he was about to set a sack down, he felt a sharp “cutting” pain shoot through his back. It got worse over the hour, and by lunchtime, he couldn’t bear it anymore.
Wica does not require proof that the accident was anyone’s fault. Its provisions come into play once it can be shown that the incident happened in the course of work. The job of the insurance adjuster is to establish that Hulyah’s claim arose from an incident at work. Once that is established, compensation should follow. Naturally, the amount in compensation depends on other relevant factors too such as the degree of permanent disability.
At first glance, the conclusion that this was a workplace accident should be simple enough to reach. It was during a work day, and Hulyah says he has WhatsApp attendance records to show he was at work that day. Moreover, he left work around lunch time to make his way to a hospital — he says he saw a doctor around 2:30pm — and he must have spoken to a supervisor or boss to get permission to go to a hospital in the middle of work. In fact, to get to the hospital, “company book for me taxi,” so there’s no denying that the company was aware of the incident.
At Tan Tock Seng hospital, an X-ray was taken (we don’t know what it shows) and he was warded one night. Then he was prescribed painkillers and rest (medical leave). All these should be on record.
Isn’t that enough to show that the incident happened in the course of work, and therefore the injury claim should be valid under Wica?
The complications of the following months
The complications start with Hulyah’s home leave, which had been arranged beforehand. Flight tickets had been bought before the accident, and he was due to fly back to Bangladesh on 8 December 2023, just a week after the accident. At the time, it didn’t seem like a bad idea at all. He would get his much-needed rest back at home and in the care of his family too. It was a no-brainer to go home as planned.
While in Bangladesh, Hulyah went to a hospital there and got an MRI done. The hospital’s doctor confirmed that his MRI results showed a spinal cord injury and advised him not to carry heavy loads.
So, although his back felt much better by the time he came back to Singapore at the end of February 2024, he was mindful of the doctor’s advice and tried to negotiate with his manager to avoid lifting heavy objects. However, the manager said such tasks were a non-negotiable part of construction jobs.
Hulyah recalls that conversation to TWC2: “Company say this one construction work [and] you cannot say like that.” If Hulyah didn’t do heavy work, “then what work you do?” asked the manager rhetorically. “Here work is very hard, no choice you no carry.”
This kind of industry pressure, and managements’ disregard of workplace safety rules, places workers like Hulyah in an impossible position.
Within a month of going back to work, his back acted up again, and once more he went to Tan Tock Seng Hospital. He was warded for a week from 23 – 30 March. Around that time, he also realised that the employer had not notified the Ministry of Manpower about the 1 December incident, so no Wica claim had been filed for him.
The system requires employers to notify the ministry within ten days of any knowledge of an accident. Hulyah’s employer, who knew about the accident on the day itself (they booked a taxi to take Hulyah to hospital), seemed either unaware of this rule, or did not care to comply with it. Nevertheless, the system allows workers to notify the ministry as well, and that’s what Hulyah did, filing a Wica compensation claim in March 2024.
A few months later, the insurance adjuster asked to see him. Hulyah gave his account of the incident. He thought it was clearcut.
He would soon realise he was mistaken. Not long after, he heard that the co-worker who, on that day, had been the one transferring the sacks from the lorry onto Hulyah’s back, had denied to the insurance company that Hulyah was carrying cement sacks. The company wasn’t denying that Hulyah was at work that day, but apparently was saying that he was doing some other work, and he was not carrying the sacks. Hulyah was sure that the company made the co-worker say what he said, what with the co-worker’s own job also at stake, “…because if he told truth, company make problem for him.”
How Wica sets the stage for conflict
Straight after our interview, Hulyah goes over to another table where Debbie Fordyce, our top expert in injury cases, is seated. It seems like he is seeking some advice.
The situation continues to develop after our meeting and we later hear from Hulyah that the insurance company “rejected” his claim. By using that word, we believe he means to tell us that the insurer ruled the claim invalid; that Hulyah couldn’t prove that the injury arose in the course of work. Notwithstanding the details we recounted above as to what happened on that day itself and the timeline, it is easy for insurance companies to come to such a conclusion when evidence is tampered with, or when they set the threshold of proof unreasonably high.
Through his lawyer, Hulyah has filed an objection. There will be a hearing at MOM in February 2025 to review the insurance company’s dismissal of the claim.
For now, our story ends here. What we have gathered is enough, for our point is that the system is badly flawed and Hulyah’s experience serves to show how the flaws affect the accident victim in real life, with the asymmetry of process causing much stress and delay. And possibly injustice.
In this particular case, the root cause was the employer tasking his employees to carry 50-kg sacks, in violation of safety rules. It follows that it would be self-incriminating for such an employer to admit that there was an accident, because doing so would expose him to penalties by our work safety regulators.
The employer did not notify MOM of the accident within ten days. If he admitted that there was an accident, he’d have to answer for why he didn’t notify. So, once events rolled this way, it would not serve his interest to admit that there ever was an accident.
Further questions
Should Hulyah’s appeal to reverse the insurance company’s finding be successful, the implication would be that he was indeed being tasked to carry 50-kg sacks of cement, in violation of weight limits set by MOM. The question then arises whether MOM should follow up and hold the employer to account for such instructions to employees.
On the one hand, the public interest would demand that such follow-up action be taken; otherwise, what’s the point of having rules without enforcement? On the other hand, Wica is supposed to be a no-fault process.
In the same vein, another question also arises should MOM find in Hulyah’s favour. To find that there was an accident in the course work would also mean that the employer was wrong not to notify MOM of the accident within ten days.
Shouldn’t the employer then be taken to task for not doing so? Otherwise, wouldn’t other employers feel encouraged to similarly not report their accidents?
Insurance companies are naturally averse to paying out money. They are profit-making enterprises, after all.
Yet MOM has put the investigation process into the hands of insurance companies and their adjusters.
Between the four-month delay in the claim being filed and the usually lethargic pace of investigation, there was plenty of time to “persuade” witnesses to the accident to change their tune. Are insurance adjusters aware of this possibility? Are they aware of the power imbalance between employers and migrant-worker employees can that give rise to such dynamics?
The only way for Hulyah to contest an adverse finding from the insurance company is to lodge an objection, which is handled by MOM itself.
It used to be that MOM handled the assessment itself from the get-go each time a Wica claim is filed. Then, in 2019, they changed the law and handed the process over to insurance companies despite there being so much inherent conflict of interest. Unsurprisingly, cases like Hulyah’s then end up back at MOM when objections are lodged.
Besides the extra delay (and stress), is this really an improvement in process? Is the current process more efficient than the previous?
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