Parliament House

In a recent article, we reported that at least 31 percent of work injury cases in our case files of 2024 and 2025 were reported later than the ten-day deadline set by the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA). This does not mean that the remaining 69 percent were reported within the ten-day deadline. Due to uncertain data, some of them were also likely to have been late. We said in that article that it wouldn’t surprise us if in actual fact 50 percent or more were reported late.

We compiled the information from 686 work injury cases we saw in 2024 and 2025. Of these, we were sure that 214 (31%) were reported late to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). Many of these were reported by the worker, which suggests that the employers were not of a mind to report the incidents at all. Annualised, we were coming across 107 late reporting cases a year.

The week that we were doing the analysis, we were not aware that Member of Parliament He Ting Ru was asking MOM a similar question. MOM’s reply to her question was interesting in that at first glance, the ministry gave a vastly different figure. Unfortunately, the parliamentary question (8 April 2026) was about under-reporting workplace injuries and ‘under-reporting’ was not defined. We would think it encompasses late reporting as well as reporting that deliberately minimises the seriousness of the incident, but we just cannot be sure whether the MP intended that meaning or whether MOM applied that meaning in its reply.

MP: Ms He Ting Ru

To ask the Minister for Manpower (a) whether the Ministry has conducted any studies to assess underreporting of workplace injuries, including against healthcare or insurance records; (b) what assessment has been made of the effectiveness of existing reporting channels and whistleblower protections; and (c) whether further enhancements are being considered.

The Minister for Manpower, in a written answer:

Under the Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) Act and Work Injury Compensation (WIC) Act, employers are required to report workplace injuries to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). Healthcare records cannot be used to assess the extent of underreporting as doctors are not required to separately maintain records of workplace injuries. Instead, cases of underreporting are detected through our regular checks and investigations into complaints from whistleblowers. The average number of underreporting breaches has been low at about 30 cases annually over the past five years. 

(made bold by TWC2)

2 As for comparison against insurance records, the iReport system that is used for reporting workplace injuries is the same reporting channel through which all WIC insurance claims are initiated. This streamlined process facilitates employers’ timely and comprehensive reporting of workplace injuries.

3 Workers who suspect that a workplace injury has not been reported can submit a report to MOM directly through the iReport system without fear of reprisal. Under the WSH Act, workers are protected against dismissals or threats of dismissal for reporting to MOM.

4 Where MOM’s investigations uncover workplace injuries that were not reported or reported late, appropriate enforcement actions would be taken against the parties involved, including fines or prosecution. To allow for a more complete oversight of workplace injuries, the reporting requirements were expanded in 2020 to cover all injuries that result in at least one day of sick leave or light duties. To provide a stronger deterrence, the maximum fines for failing to report an injury were also doubled in 2024 to $10,000 for first-time offenders and $20,000 for repeat offenders.

5 MOM will continue to monitor the reporting trends and tighten our enforcement efforts against underreporting, if required.

The ministry’s figure for under-reporting (“30 cases annually over the past five years”) is wildly different from our data. As mentioned above, we found 214 cases where the injury was reported late, over a two year period. This was just from TWC2’s casebook alone. Per year, that’s about 107 cases. The real number is probably significantly more than that because (a) there were other cases in our case book where the reporting might have been late, except that our data did not have enough granularity; (b) not all injured workers come to TWC2 and show up on our casebook – in fact only a minority show up at TWC2.

Until we know what exactly was meant by “under-reporting” we cannot go any further in this comparison. If the ministry uses the term to mean not reported at all, then it raises the question of how they knew an incident happened if it was never reported? Secondly, applying such a narrow definition tends to minimise the malfeasance of late reporting. As we pointed out above, almost always, a case reported more than 6 to 8 weeks after an accident is one reported by the worker, not the employer. Isn’t the motivation of not-reporting-until-the worker-has-reported the same as not reporting and hoping no one reports it?

Moreover, as our previous article explained, late reporting alone has implications for the medical treatment available to the worker, as well as his right to compensation should permanent disability ensue. So, late reporting is no small issue.

We believe our measure of late reporting – anything later than ten days, as per law – gives a better picture of the reality on the ground.