SMRT completes internal probe into fatal accident, appoints external reviewers

SINGAPORE - Rail operator SMRT Corp has completed its internal investigations into the cause of the track accident that claimed the lives of two of its young employees on March 22.

The Temasek-owned company said on Friday (April 8) that it has appointed experts from Keppel Corp and Transport for London - the equivalent of Singapore's Land Transport Authority - as well as a former executive of Hong Kong's MTR Corp to review its findings.

The review will be carried out with SMRT board members, before a report is handed over to the Ministry of Manpower and the police for their statutory investigations.

SMRT would not say what its investigations had uncovered,but The Straits Times understands it is likely that there were multiple lapses of safety protocol.

Singaporeans Nasrulhudin Najumudin, 26, and Muhammad Asyraf Ahmad Buhari, 24, were hit by a train near Pasir Ris station when they were on the track to investigate a technical fault on the morning of March 22.

The two men, who just joined SMRT in January this year, were part of a team of 15 that was despatched to look into a reported alarm from a monitoring device.

They were killed by a train travelling at 60kmh in automatic mode. The driver, understood to be an SMRT veteran, applied the emergency brakes but could not stop in time.

This article was first published on April 8, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.