Migrant worker deaths: Ensuring mental health support for their colleagues

They can face trauma over loss, fears for their own workplace safety, say counsellors

- Christine Tan

Despite the pair not speaking the same language, a supervisor from India at a construction firm forged a close friendship with a colleague from China only to see him die at work.

The 44-year-old heavy vehicle driver was crushed to death between his truck and a stationary concrete mixer truck at a worksite near the Singapore Zoo in Mandai on March 9.

When Ms Durga Arivan, senior psychotherapist and manager of psychotherapy and counselling services at local charity HealthServe, saw the supervisor six days later, he was still trembling.

She said: "The bond was so rich, they called each other 'brother'. So the impact was definitely bad." She added that during a group counselling session, the supervisor found healing as he wept with other colleagues.

In 2023, 36 workers died at work.

Although this was a record low for Singapore's workplace fatality rate, what is often unseen are the scores of traumatised workers affected by their colleagues' deaths. Mr Michael Lim, director of the Migrant Workers' Segment at the National Trades Union Congress, who oversees the Migrant Workers' Centre (MWC), said: "Beyond just feeling the loss of a fellow brother, sometimes it's also about fears for their own safety and a stigma of doing certain tasks that may result in the same accident."

When part of the Fuji Xerox Towers building in Tanjong Pagar collapsed during demolition works on June 15, 2023, killing Indian worker Vinoth Kumar, the MWC referred about 10 of the worker's colleagues and relatives for counselling.