Buried by Mill Scale At Pier
Around 8.45 am on February 24, 2012 a fatal accident occurred at Port Klang, Selangor involving a Bangladeshi employee who worked with the cleaning contractor. During the accident, the victim was collecting mill scale that has spilled on the pier floor under the path of the wharf crane (capacity 20 tons), which, at the time was unloading the mill scale from vessels into the hopper on the pier (Figure 1). While the grab bucket used to transport the mill scale passing through the area where the victim was working, grab bucket had opened suddenly and cause the load carried to fall and buried the victim below (Figure 2). Victim died on the way to the hospital.
 Figure 1 : Scene of the accident |
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 [a]-Grab bucket used to load the mill scale |
 [b] |
 Figure 2 : Grab bucket in the open position (For illustration) |
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Suggestions for Improvement:
- Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control [HIRARC] should be done more thorough, where all work activities to be carried out and possibilities that would occur should be taken into account. In this case, the need for cleaning works to be done under the unloading work by the wharf crane should be clearly stated.
- Safe work procedures on how a job to be carried out must be generated and explain clearly in detail about things that may or may not be done, especially at critical times such as during the change of shift by the employee.
- Supervision over a work, particularly for works involving the use of heavy machinery and hazardous substances, should be given more emphasized especially in terms of knowledge and consideration by the supervisors themselves in order to ensure that supervised work area is safe for work.
- Attention and priorities should be given to, and investigation should be carried out on every near missed incident and dangerous occurrences hardly ever happened during work done. The causes of these incidents, particularly those involving mechanical failure of a machine must be identified specifically to prevent recurrence of similar incidents (Hiyari-Hatto).
- Activities such as scheduled maintenance and inspection of machineries used to perform a work are truly crucial elements to ensure the integrity and suitability of equipment to be used. It should take into account the skills and knowledge of employees assigned to perform both of these activities in order to identify and solve any problems encountered.
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