SINGAPORE - A quality control surveyor was killed after a shipping container weighing more than two tonnes was lowered onto him, and the state coroner has found that the stacker operator who moved it had failed to comply with safety procedures.

In his findings into Mr Teo Ser Kiong’s death, State Coroner Adam Nakhoda said that Mr Arumugam Ganesan had driven a stacker while concurrently lowering a container at a depot in Pioneer Crescent on Oct 1, 2021.

The state coroner added: “He failed to see that Mr Teo was standing where he intended to place the… container and as a result the container was lowered onto Mr Teo.

“I found that this failure to comply with the (safe work procedures) measures dealing with moving and placing shipping containers was the primary reason for the accident.”

In addition, he found that Mr Teo, 49, who was also an operations executive for Allied Container (Engineers & Manufacturers), had not complied with a key requirement of the firm’s traffic management plan (TMP).

In his findings dated May 19, 2023, the state coroner said that, according to evidence, Mr Teo did not inform a depot manager that he was entering the working area where the containers were located.

The TMP required staff to notify the depot manager before going into such an area.

The depot manager would then alert stacker operators, so the operators could either avoid the area or stop work in the relevant area that the staff would be in.

State Coroner Nakhoda, who found Mr Teo’s death to be work-related misadventure, also said that while there was an attempt to demarcate pedestrian and vehicular areas within the depot, the demarcation was not consistently maintained as it had ...