There is a reason that the annual workplace safety and health report of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) highlights the major injury rate as well as the fatal injury rate. While deaths on the job are obviously cause for grave concern, attention deserves to be paid also to major injuries, or severe non-fatal injuries, which include amputations, blindness and fractures. Such debilitating injuries can severely impact the victims’ lives. The trauma is possibly even greater if the victims are foreign workers who staked their property at home to land a foreign job. Their dreams are shattered by their disability.

Fortunately, such numbers are small. MOM reports that, for every 100,000 workers, about 16 suffered major injuries at work, and fewer than one died on the job in 2023. This is Singapore’s lowest workplace fatality rate, and is the lowest workplace major injury rate in a decade, not including 2020 which was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The top two sectors for workplace incidents – the construction and the transportation and storage sectors – saw a decrease in both their combined fatal and major injury rates. But the manufacturing sector had the highest combined fatal and major injury rates. Yet, excluding 2020 – when the Covid-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions, such as foreign workers having to stop work – 2023 was the first time that the workplace fatality rate had fallen below the one per 100,000 workers mark. This goal – which only the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Britain have attained consistently – is one that Singapore had sought to reach by 2028. It is commendable that the country has reached its target ahead of schedule. What is important now is to sustain the achievement.