Ferrying Workers Safely
The following article was published in the Straits Times on 20 May 2009.
Ferrying workers safely
By Teh Joo Lin
20 May 2009
A good solution has to be found quickly so more lives are not lost
IT'S happened again.
On Monday, three foreign workers sitting in the back of a lorry died after it crashed into the back of a trailer. A fourth man in the front seat also died.
How many more must lose their lives before a solution to ferrying workers is found?
It took less than six months for the public outcry over the death of an eight-year-old boy last April to lead to action: minibuses must have seat belts installed. Now, 6,400 small buses are being fitted with safety harnesses. It was Singapore-style efficiency at work.
But the authorities seem to be in a bind on the issue of ferrying workers - usually foreigners - in the backs of lorries. There are many more of these workers than students and any solution will have to satisfy more interest groups.
Last year, an average of four workers a week never reached their destinations in one piece. Casualties have mounted but thankfully, fatalities have not been high: five in 2006 and two each in the next two years.
The issue of where and how foreign workers should be housed has been a subject of intense discussion every now and then, with plenty of ideas thrown up. But the question of how they should be ferried has received less attention. That is, until the next accident occurs.
A workgroup co-chaired by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the Manpower Ministry (MOM) has been labouring since its setting-up was announced last March to come up with solutions to this problem.
While a report is expected to be completed by the year's end, no finding has been made public so far. That is perhaps an indication of the complexity of the problem, and the difficulty of having to satisfy the interests of several stakeholders.
In the minibus issue, the biggest concern was how much operators would have to pay to equip their vehicles with seat belts. This was resolved when the Government contributed $35 million for a five-year plan. Six-month window periods were scheduled so as to accommodate the worries of operators that they would lose business while their buses were retro-fitted.
All this was done to satisfy one big, clear and important constituency: parents with school-going children.
The big stakeholder in the foreign worker transport issue, besides the workers themselves, is the employer. Small-time contractors and some big-name companies too are likely to complain about any solution that puts pressure on their bottom lines in these turbulent economic times.
Perhaps the most obvious solution is to ban riding in the back of lorries altogether - as Bahrain, which has about 500,000 foreign workers, did from May 1 this year.
The alternatives? Public transport for the workers is one option, with workers equipped with a prepaid fare card.
But this means adding to the commuter crush during rush hour. Some segments of the local population may complain about having to share standing space in trains and buses with foreign workers.
Having them ride in chartered buses, which some employers are already providing for their workers, is more feasible.
Mr Neo Tiam Beng, president of the Singapore School and Private Hire Bus Owners' Association, says that the operators who run some 4,000 private buses for hire here, have the capacity to provide transportation to foreign workers.
This option, however, comes at a price, with each one-way trip estimated at $40 to $50 for about 40 workers, or roughly $1 a head at current oil prices. That's still a lot considering that employers with trucks pay near zero for using them to transport both equipment and people. There is likely to be a cry for government subsidies, which can run into the millions.
Rules on ferrying workers on cargo decks might be tightened up, with harsher penalties imposed for contraventions.
The rules now include allocating each worker at least 0.372 sq m of sitting space - slightly bigger than a full page of this newspaper. Workers are also not allowed to sit more than 3.2m off the ground, among other things.
Introduced in 2003, these measures have probably saved lives, but the LTA still caught 352 lorries overladen with workers last year, up from 226 in 2007. The maximum court penalty for those who ferry more workers than allowed is a $1,000 fine or a three-month jail term.
So perhaps it comes back to installing seat belts, as the Singapore Armed Forces has done for its trucks. Except that army trucks are designed for passengers to sit in, while the private trucks we are talking about are built only to carry cargo.
There may be other solutions to this problem: no travelling on expressways, for example, or having as many workers as possible stay on or near worksites.
Or the LTA could tie requests to hire foreign workers to providing them with adequate transportation. In other words, if you need more than 20 workers, tell LTA how you are going to get to them to work and back.
All these suggested solutions have their costs and trade-offs - and Singapore isn't alone in grappling with the issue.
In the United States, 30 of the 50 states have some form of restriction on how people can be transported on the cargo beds of pickup trucks. Britain has gone further with a blanket ban on passengers sitting on the decks of heavy goods vehicles.
Bahrain's move came despite claims from businesses that the cost of ferrying workers in buses could set the construction industry back by as much as $1 billion Bahraini dinars (S$3.9 billion).
At the end of the day, each country will have to weigh the life of a foreign worker against the economic and even political costs of not doing anything.
It's time we grappled with this problem - before the next accident occurs.
(c) 2009 Singapore Press Holdings Limited
Ferrying workers safely
By Teh Joo Lin
20 May 2009
A good solution has to be found quickly so more lives are not lost
IT'S happened again.
On Monday, three foreign workers sitting in the back of a lorry died after it crashed into the back of a trailer. A fourth man in the front seat also died.
How many more must lose their lives before a solution to ferrying workers is found?
It took less than six months for the public outcry over the death of an eight-year-old boy last April to lead to action: minibuses must have seat belts installed. Now, 6,400 small buses are being fitted with safety harnesses. It was Singapore-style efficiency at work.
But the authorities seem to be in a bind on the issue of ferrying workers - usually foreigners - in the backs of lorries. There are many more of these workers than students and any solution will have to satisfy more interest groups.
Last year, an average of four workers a week never reached their destinations in one piece. Casualties have mounted but thankfully, fatalities have not been high: five in 2006 and two each in the next two years.
The issue of where and how foreign workers should be housed has been a subject of intense discussion every now and then, with plenty of ideas thrown up. But the question of how they should be ferried has received less attention. That is, until the next accident occurs.
A workgroup co-chaired by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the Manpower Ministry (MOM) has been labouring since its setting-up was announced last March to come up with solutions to this problem.
While a report is expected to be completed by the year's end, no finding has been made public so far. That is perhaps an indication of the complexity of the problem, and the difficulty of having to satisfy the interests of several stakeholders.
In the minibus issue, the biggest concern was how much operators would have to pay to equip their vehicles with seat belts. This was resolved when the Government contributed $35 million for a five-year plan. Six-month window periods were scheduled so as to accommodate the worries of operators that they would lose business while their buses were retro-fitted.
All this was done to satisfy one big, clear and important constituency: parents with school-going children.
The big stakeholder in the foreign worker transport issue, besides the workers themselves, is the employer. Small-time contractors and some big-name companies too are likely to complain about any solution that puts pressure on their bottom lines in these turbulent economic times.
Perhaps the most obvious solution is to ban riding in the back of lorries altogether - as Bahrain, which has about 500,000 foreign workers, did from May 1 this year.
The alternatives? Public transport for the workers is one option, with workers equipped with a prepaid fare card.
But this means adding to the commuter crush during rush hour. Some segments of the local population may complain about having to share standing space in trains and buses with foreign workers.
Having them ride in chartered buses, which some employers are already providing for their workers, is more feasible.
Mr Neo Tiam Beng, president of the Singapore School and Private Hire Bus Owners' Association, says that the operators who run some 4,000 private buses for hire here, have the capacity to provide transportation to foreign workers.
This option, however, comes at a price, with each one-way trip estimated at $40 to $50 for about 40 workers, or roughly $1 a head at current oil prices. That's still a lot considering that employers with trucks pay near zero for using them to transport both equipment and people. There is likely to be a cry for government subsidies, which can run into the millions.
Rules on ferrying workers on cargo decks might be tightened up, with harsher penalties imposed for contraventions.
The rules now include allocating each worker at least 0.372 sq m of sitting space - slightly bigger than a full page of this newspaper. Workers are also not allowed to sit more than 3.2m off the ground, among other things.
Introduced in 2003, these measures have probably saved lives, but the LTA still caught 352 lorries overladen with workers last year, up from 226 in 2007. The maximum court penalty for those who ferry more workers than allowed is a $1,000 fine or a three-month jail term.
So perhaps it comes back to installing seat belts, as the Singapore Armed Forces has done for its trucks. Except that army trucks are designed for passengers to sit in, while the private trucks we are talking about are built only to carry cargo.
There may be other solutions to this problem: no travelling on expressways, for example, or having as many workers as possible stay on or near worksites.
Or the LTA could tie requests to hire foreign workers to providing them with adequate transportation. In other words, if you need more than 20 workers, tell LTA how you are going to get to them to work and back.
All these suggested solutions have their costs and trade-offs - and Singapore isn't alone in grappling with the issue.
In the United States, 30 of the 50 states have some form of restriction on how people can be transported on the cargo beds of pickup trucks. Britain has gone further with a blanket ban on passengers sitting on the decks of heavy goods vehicles.
Bahrain's move came despite claims from businesses that the cost of ferrying workers in buses could set the construction industry back by as much as $1 billion Bahraini dinars (S$3.9 billion).
At the end of the day, each country will have to weigh the life of a foreign worker against the economic and even political costs of not doing anything.
It's time we grappled with this problem - before the next accident occurs.
(c) 2009 Singapore Press Holdings Limited
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