Gary Choo Pu Chang pleaded guilty to an offence under the Workplace Safety and Health Act. - ST
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): The former executive director of an industrial gas supply firm linked to a 2015 fatal blast was fined S$45,000 on Friday (April 29) for failing to take necessary measures to ensure the safety of employees who were working in a laboratory at its speciality gas centre.
Gary Choo Pu Chang, 64, pleaded guilty on Monday to an offence under the Workplace Safety and Health Act.
The explosion, which ripped through Leeden National Oxygen's laboratory in Tanjong Kling Road in Jurong on Oct 12, 2015, killed chemist Lim Siaw Chian and left seven others injured.
In January last year, the company was fined $340,000 and Steven Tham Weng Cheong, who was its managing director, was fined $45,000 over workplace safety lapses.
The company and Tham, then 69, were each convicted of an offence under the Act in December 2020.
Leeden National Oxygen was established on Oct 1, 2014, following the merger of two firms - Leeden and National Oxygen.
Choo resigned on Aug 12, 2015, two months before the fatal blast on Oct 12 that year.
Shortly before the tragedy, Lim was carrying out a gas analysis on a gas cylinder in the laboratory.
The initial explosion killed her instantly and injured three of her colleagues who were working nearby.
The incident further resulted in injuries to four other employees of Leeden National Oxygen.
The Straits Times previously reported that Lim had returned to work from maternity leave a week before the tragedy.
The former Malaysian received her Singapore citizenship just a month before she died.
Her charred remains were found on six occasions over a two-month period after the incident, and were identified using her daughter's DNA. Her baby was six months old at the time.
In 2016, then State Coroner Marvin Bay found Lim's death to be an industrial misadventure.
In an earlier proceeding, Ministry of Manpower prosecutors Samuel Chua and Khong Zi-Wei told the court that closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage showed that the initial explosion occurred towards the rear of the laboratory.
Lim was last seen touching a regulatory valve assembly (RVA) connected to a gas cylinder beside a gas chromatography machine before a bright light appeared.
The CCTV footage then went blank.
A forensic assessment later determined that the primary failure was at an unqualified welded joint found in a stem of the RVA, which was attached to a valve of the cylinder.
The prosecutors said: "The failure of the welded joint in the... stem of the RVA was found to have pre-existed but was not prudently checked before usage prior to the incident. The failure... resulted in a leak of flammable methane-oxygen-nitrogen mix."
The court heard that the leak led to an ignition caused by the spontaneous reaction of the leaking gas mixture in the presence of frictional heat generated due to the escaping gas mixture and internal sudden agitation of debris and particulate.
The blast happened soon after.
Among other things, Choo had failed to take reasonably practicable measures to ensure that unsafe modified RVAs were not used in the laboratory when testing combustible gases.
