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SINGAPORE: The Manpower Ministry (MOM) will be pouring an extra S$8 million into a fund to help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage risks at the workplace.

The announcement comes in the wake of higher fatal accidents involving lifting equipment, especially in the construction sector.

This accounted for 56 percent of all workplace fatalities between 2002 and 2006.

Speaking at a workplace safety seminar, Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi Daipi said that seven people have already died in accidents involving lifting equipment this year.

He noted that many of these incidents were caused by a lack of trained personnel, use of unsafe rigging and weak management of human traffic at the site.

That is why MOM is putting in more money to help another 2,300 SMEs – three times more than the number which have benefited from the "Risk Management Assistance Fund" since April 2006 – manage risks at the workplace.

The top-up will be spread over the next four years – S$2 million each year till March 2011.

MOM also said it is reducing its share of co-payment for related programmes by more than half from S$7,500 to S$3,500.

Mr Hawazi said this is because initiating workplace risk management projects are not as costly as previously expected, especially when several SMEs group together to organise training events.


- CNA/so