KUALA LUMPUR, March 29 — The Social Security Organisation (Socso) has paid a total of RM1.4 billion in 2021 in compensation involving industrial accidents across all industries, which include local and foreign workers.

Head of prevention, medical and rehabilitation division, Azlan Darus said that in 2021, Socso’s interim data had recorded a total of 61,447 accident cases, whereby 36,794 cases involved industrial accidents, with almost 700 death and a further 24,683 cases were accidents during commuting to the workplace.

"The construction industry had among the highest number of fatal accidents. Therefore, as we emerged from the pandemic lockdowns and into the economic recovery phases, it is high time to reset its practices and emphasise more on health and safety to prevent losses,” he told reporters after the launch of the 20th Master Builders Association Malaysia (MBAM) Annual Safety and Health Conference 2022 themed "Construction Safety-Beyond Compliance In The New Dawn”.

Azlan also read the opening speech of Socso’s chief executive officer Datuk Seri Mohammed Azman Aziz Mohammed during the launch today.

In his speech, Mohamed Azman said every job disaster is a cost to the community and nation with incidents such as loss of lives, physical and mental ability, property damages, affected productivity results and others.

"Negligence and shortcomings to ensure that aspects of occupational safety and health in the workplace are complied with are among the main factors that contributed to accident cases,” he said.

Further, Azlan emphasised that social security should be beyond compensation as when accidents happened, compensation alone is not enough as families’ livelihood would also be impacted.

"Compensation is post-event. We need to talk about before the event what is the preventive measure, therefore, have to do something different,” he said.

In 2017, he highlighted that the government had introduced the guidelines for occupational safety and health for the construction industry whereby the responsibility to ensure safety and health at the construction sites will not only be the duty of contractors but also the designers and developers.

"Parliament had passed an amendment to the Occupational Safety and Health Act last year, and under the amendment, there is an enabler for the government to make regulation to include the responsibility of the developers as well as designers. We hope to make it a mandatory requirement soon.

"If we benchmark against the developed nations, they have the regulation to include developers and designers,” he shared.

Meanwhile, MBAM immediate past president Foo Chek Lee commented that 40 per cent of accidents occurred due to the failure of the design to incorporate safety aspects and whether it was doable by the contractors.

"So when accidents occurred, not only the next of kin suffers but the company would also suffer. The site will be sealed off at least for one month and the 200 to 300 workers had to stop work. Who will pay the compensation?  So if you could take care of the safety aspects, you could also have safe profits,” he added. — Bernama