ERRANT medical practices by several doctors and the lack of empathy among employers in Singapore have been put under the spotlight again following the case of a migrant worker who was given only one day off after losing the tip of his finger in a workplace incident last year.
In September last year, V. Anbazhaga, a shipyard worker from India, lost his right index finger after it was crushed by falling metal debris, but was only given one day medical leave and three months of light duties, the Straits Times reported.
The accident caused his mangled fingertip to be amputated, but the 57-year-old said his boss did not report the injury and he was not given any light duties. Instead, he was unable to work and had resorted to engaging a lawyer to seek compensation for his injuries.
In a separate incident, a Singapore court has recently vowed to come down hard on such offenders, as it issued a six-month suspension on an orthopedic surgeon, Wong Him Choon, of Raffles Hospital in May this year.
According to the paper, Wong had operated on construction worker Fan Mao Bing’s broken hand, but gave the Chinese national just two days’ medical leave and certified him fit for light duties for a month after.
SEE ALSO: Singapore MP Denise Phua apologises for calling foreign laborer groups ‘walking time-bombs’
In reading out the grounds for the suspension, Judge of Appeal Andrew Phang said: “It should not be the case that a patient has to ‘kneel and beg’ (as the patient in fact did, according to Dr Wong) for medical leave that he was in any case entitled to on proper clinical grounds.”
The judge’s decision was welcomed by migrant worker groups who said the step taken on the widespread problem was long-overdue.
The Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) had filed the complaint for Fan in 2011 and is now looking to make reports against at least another four surgeons.
Jolovan Wham, former HOME executive director, said there were a few dozen cases seen annually. Most of them, he said, involved medical practitioners in private clinics and hospitals.
Wham said that employers kept their safety records clean and avoided future higher insurance premiums by not reporting such accidents to the Manpower Ministry (MoM), as cases do not need to be reported if a worker receives a medical certificate of three days or less, or was hospitalised for less than 24 hours.
The post Indian migrant in Singapore given only one day leave after losing finger in workplace accident appeared first on Asian Correspondent.
