Lee Hsien Yang: 44 workplace fatalities, and death of NSF Edward Go ‘not consistent with being a first-world country’

After the death of NSF Edward Go in a Henderson Rd fire, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s brother Lee Hsien Yang says that Singapore “needs to inculcate a culture of safety” at work and at home.

Calling the recent death of the SCDF NSF “tragic” in a Dec 18 Facebook post, the younger Mr Lee wrote that a “strong safety culture would help significantly prevent accidental deaths at work and at home” and noted that there had been 44 workplace deaths in 2022. “This is not consistent with being a first-world country,” he added.

He also urged that installing fire alarms be made mandatory for all residential properties, and not only in new ones, which is what is practised at present. “Fire alarms, like the wearing of seatbelts, have been shown to make a dramatic difference in preventing serious fires and saving lives. Early detection saves lives and limits the spreading of a fire,” he added.

Mr Lee also cited the Government’s Fire Kills campaign in the UK, which makes “the startling revelation that ‘you are around 8 times more likely to die from a fire if you don’t have a working smoke alarm in your home.’”

“Regulations can do much to change behaviour. 

Recall our anti-littering and anti-spitting rules of many years ago. We need now to use these, as well as changes in attitudes and culture, to prevent terrible and tragic accidents at work and at home.

Any preventable death is one death too many,” Mr Lee added in his Facebook post.

NSF firefighter Corporal Edward H Go died in hospital after collapsing at the 19 Henderson Road fire scene; the first firefighter to pass away during an SCDF operation.

Only 19 years old at the time of his death, he was accorded a ceremonial funeral and was promoted to Sergeant 1 from the rank of corporal after his death.

An initial investigation into the fire showed that it was likely to have been of an electrical origin from the bedroom of the flat.

As for workplace fatalities, the Dec 13 death of a 45-year-old worker while unloading steel bars at a construction site in Tengah brought the total this year to 44, the biggest number of such fatalities since 2016, when 66 such deaths had taken place.

For comparison, there were 37 workplace deaths last year, 30 in 2020, and 39 in 2019. /TISG

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