Workplace fatalities higher last year than pre-COVID year

The workplace fatality rate was 1.3 per 100,000 labourers.

The number of fatalities in the workplace increased in Singapore last year, results showed from the Workplace Safety and Health Report 2022 by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

In 2022, 46 workplace fatal injuries occurred. This was higher than the 37 fatalities in 2021.

Seven of the fatal injuries were due to work-related traffic accidents (WRTA).

Overall, this was equivalent to a fatal injury rate of 1.3 per 100,000 workers, higher than the 1.1 rate in 2021 and 2019 (pre-COVID-19).

Top industries that had the most incidents were construction, transportation and storage, and manufacturing.

Despite the increase in fatalities, the Singaporean government implemented the Heightened Safety Period (HSP) last 1 September 2022 to reduce workplace risks and injuries in the earlier months of the year.

Due to the HSP, the monthly average for fatalities fell from 4.5 per month to 2.5.

“The HSP measures have worked well to arrest the spate of workplace fatalities in 2022 and the construction sector has seen improvements in reducing workplace accidents. However, the incidence of major injuries did not improve in some sectors such as manufacturing. I call on all employers and workers to remain vigilant,” Senior Minister of State for Manpower Zaqy Mohamad said.

He also emphasised the government’s goal to achieve a fatality rate of 1.0 per 100,000 workers by 2028.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia