Having no intention of adding fuel to fire, the unfortunate incident that took place in Puchong was a good wake-up call to the state of Health and Safety Issues related to the Petroleum Industry and most major construction sites in Malaysia. Most major Malaysian industries and companies I found while working as a Health and Safety Officer at the Petronas Kerteh and Gebeng sites treated Health and Safety issues as a necessary inconvenience. I was fired from my job with the lame excuse that I was ' not a team player!' I found way back when the money talks and bullshit walks as far as Safety issues were concerned and perhaps it still is or worse, but who is keeping a tab anymore. Even back during the years when the construction of the Kerteh Petroleum Refinery Stations was underway and the Safety and Health was first highlighted as a prerequisite for such major constructions as major foreign companies were involved, companies such as Bechtel, Samsung Engineering, BASF, and Foster Wheeler to name a few and major local companies such as Peremba, Ibai Bina, Ho Hup, Auto Blast, Health and Safety issue was observed to the letter.
I was fired from my job as Health and Safety Manager by the company I was working for Autoblast, an industrial painting company. I was fired under the advice of the Main Contractor then, which was Samsung Engineering. I remember well the day it happened as I watched the Samsung assistant Project manager walk into my boss's office and when he walked out with an ugly smirk looking at me as I sat at the table of the cafeteria where the incident I had raised was happening. I had raised the issue of the underground sewage tank overflowing every time it rained and causing filth to splash all over the area where the surau and the canteen were located. At the Health and Safety meeting every morning, it seemed I was the only one raising this complaint while other Safety Officers from the other companies kept their mouth shut. In the meantime, Samsung was demanding that more portable toilets be installed all over the site. I raised the issue that the Main contractor should address the issue of the overflowing septic tanks, which was eventually taken care of when a few Indah Water Tank trucks came to empty the tanks, and this I witnessed happening before my eyes as I sat in the canteen before I was given the letter of dismissal an hour or so later. I was actually glad for the dismissal as I was tired of closing my eyes to the shit that was going on wqhen it came to Health and Safety Issues all ove the Petronas Construction site. Every company wanted to have a clean record when it came to workers' accidents and injuries, especially the main contractors like Lynde and Samsung Engineering.
The sad thing about my being fired was that there was no inquiry at all by the State DOSH agency which was supposed to oversee the whole Health and Safety status of the Kerteh Refinery site. How and why can a company fire its Safety Manager? No, the DOSH department in Terengganu had no idea or know-how about what was happening at this major construction site. The lives that were lost and the injuries suffered due to negligence and corners being cut to save money were rampant and gone unoticed by the government agency. In my three years as a Safety Officer working for three major companies, including Ibai Bina Sdn. Bhd., Van Seumerren Romstar, and Autoblast, I never once met or was confronted by a government Health and Safety Official. For that matter, I was only confronted once by a Petronas Safety Officer while employed by Ibai Bina. I never once saw a Petronas employee being trained on site while the construction was going on either, which to me was poor hindsight for those involved in training future employees who would be responsible for running the refinery facility. I only first saw these young men in bright yellow jackets driving around in air-conditioned four-wheel drives when I was working in Gebeng, when the project was almost completed. Had I been employed by Petrona back then, I would have insisted all these young kids be on-site to observe and learn from bottom to top how the whole facilty was constructed and at what cost.
It is my sincere hope that Petronas has upgraded its training in awareness of Health and Safety issues by now. It would be a shame if more such accidents occur in the future due to negligence on the part of its Safety Department which would tarnish its image at the International level. Complacency costs lives, and sadly enough, when I was fired, Petronas was not even aware, much less took an interest in what was going on. What happened yesterday is perhaps is the result of the wear and tear of the equipments over time. It is still human error when this happens and should be rectified where and when needed and not wait till litigation happens due to negligence.
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