Shohag Mohammad with his wife and daughter. Photo has been colour-corrected.

Shohag Mohammad, 40, was killed on 15 December 2024 while riding in the back of a lorry. There is a sickening quality to such bad news because for decades, migrant workers have been injured or killed when being transported this way, yet our government remains unmoved. There is huge resistance to banning the practice.

In the same accident on that fateful morning, two other workers were injured as well.

It was first reported on the website Mothership with several photos, which also added that according to the police, no other vehicle was involved in the accident. Beyond that, how exactly the accident unfolded and how Shohag died is unknown. The driver, 41, was arrested for careless driving.

This photo was carried by Mothership in their story on the accident.

Through our network, TWC2 managed to get in touch with Shohag’s family and learned that he was 40, married and had a 6-year-old daughter. He was the sole breadwinner of the family. He has two brothers (he’s the youngest), two sisters, and his mother is still alive. The family lives in Munshiganj district – just south of the capital city Dhaka.

He had been working in Singapore for 6 to 8 years, but only started working for this employer as a shipyard welder (CK2 Engineering Pte Ltd) for three months.

Although this case should be one where the family will get compensation under the Work Injury Compensation Act, the process will take a while. To tide the bereaved family over the difficult months ahead, TWC2 began a fundraiser so that we can quickly send some money to them. The appeal ended on 20 January 2025 and we raised $35,820.

We take this opportunity to thank all the caring souls who contributed.

Decades-old issue; government unmoved

The Straits Times reported the incident on 18 December (One dead, two injured in lorry accident in Tuas), but there were no new facts about what happened. It reported conjecture that the deceased worker had lost his life because a heavy tool box at the back of the lorry fell on him, though the newspaper added that they had not been able to independently verify this.

The Straits Times wrote:

The accident has reignited criticism over the practice of transporting workers on the rear of lorries – an issue that has been raised many times over the years. The Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics called for the practice to be banned, describing it as a “fundamentally unsafe mode of transport”.

Transient Workers Count Too general manager Ethan Guo said: “Clearly, whatever system Singapore has tried to implement to mitigate the safety of transporting workers by lorry hasn’t worked.”

The newspaper did, however, unearth some statistics:

As at October, there have been four deaths and 380 injuries linked to lorry accidents in 2024, including drivers and passengers, according to the latest figures from the Department of Statistics website.

There was one death and 449 injuries that resulted from lorry accidents in 2023, and six deaths and 351 injuries due to such accidents in 2022.

The numbers do not say how many of these casualities were migrant workers, though hardly any Singaporean rides on the back of lorries. The Road Traffic Act actually forbids carrying passengers on the back of lorries, but makes an exception allowing a vehicle owner or hirer to ferry their own employees.

Over the years, the government has given various reasons why they were not prepared to ban the practice. They include:

  • Not enough buses to transport workers;
  • Not enough drivers to drive buses;
  • Having buses would add to congestion on roads;
  • Making employers buy or hire buses would add cost and hurt employers’ bottom lines;
  • Increased inefficiency when lorries cannot be used to transport humans and equipment together in the same vehicle to a worksite.

These are utilitarian objections. Buses can be bought. Drivers can be hired among migrant workers themselves. Inefficiency can be overcome with proper scheduling. That these small, operational reasons are raised to the level of uncompromising dogma against changing the rules tells us everything we need to know about how little many employers and the Singapore government care about migrant workers’ lives and limbs.

We pointed out to the Straits Times – and they carried this point – that ferrying workers on the backs of lorries is prohibited even in the Gulf states which are often associated with bad treatment of migrant workers. The newspaper in its follow-up story on the accident (Lorry accident victim father of six-year-old girl; family still in shock, 11 January 2025) wrote:

Noting how places such as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates have stopped ferrying workers on the back of lorries since the early 2000s, TWC2 said Singapore is virtually the only first-world country that has continued with this practice.

It’s not just the United Arab Emirates. Qatar too has banned the practice. Bahrain has banned the practice as well.

Singapore is exceptional – in a way that can be termed callousness.