Claims under Work Injury Compensation Act by S Pass and Work Permit Holders in Last Three Years

2 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Manpower in the last three years, what percentage of claims under the Work Injury Compensation Act made by S Pass and Work Permit holders are determined to be valid or invalid within (i) one month (ii) three months (iii) six months and (iv) longer than six months from the accident respectively.

Mrs Josephine Teo: Investigation on the validity of a work injury claim starts after we have received an incident report from the employee or his representatives.

In 2018, 70% of the claims by S Pass and Work Permit Holders were determined to be valid or not within one month. For the remaining claims, determining validity took a longer time because of delays due to various parties.

Common reasons for delays include incomplete information provided by the injured employee, difficulty in locating and getting witnesses to come forward, and having to wait for medical assessments of whether an injury occurred or not, in cases where injuries were not visible.

For cases that took more than six months, they are mainly due to fraudulent claims investigation. These cases are complex and we want to conclusively establish whether they were work injuries, rather than prematurely ruling them as valid or invalid.