Fatal site incident" Contractor stops work

Work has stopped at a construction site where a man died after being hit by a falling metal gate on Tuesday.

The contractor of the site at Bartley Road East, Singapore Piling and Civil Engineering, said yesterday it had voluntarily stopped work and was investigating the case.

"We have to take the initiative, (our stop-work order) will last as long as we are able to conduct an investigation and find out the root cause," said Mr Kelvin Ho, safety manager of BBR Holdings, the contractor's parent company.

On Tuesday morning, a metal gate - about 4m high and 6m wide - fell on the worker, a 41-year-old Bangladeshi, killing him.

"Preliminary findings show that a worker was testing the sliding motion of a gate when it collapsed and pinned him to the ground," said a Ministry of Manpower (MOM) spokesman.

The worker, known to his friends as Mr Khorim, has a three-year-old daughter back home. He started working at Sterling Engineering, the sub-contractor, six months ago, according to reports.

The Straits Times visited Sterling Engineering's office yesterday but it declined to comment.

There were 17 construction fatalities in the first six months of this year, against 33 for all of last year.

All was quiet yesterday at the site. The accident area was cordoned off and the fallen metal gate remained on the ground. But other buildings looked finished and painted.

The gate - which allows access to a complex directly above the Downtown Line MRT tunnels - was going to be a permanent fixture, said Mr Ho. The work was nearing completion, he added. "We were going to hand over (the project). The gate was one of the last things we had to do."

MOM is investigating.

dansonc@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Sep 4, 2014.
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