‘No space is safe in the lorry’: HOME calls for ban on lorry transport, asks for subsidies to help firms transition to safer transport

SINGAPORE: The Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME) released a report on Wednesday (March 19) highlighting the risks of transporting migrant workers on lorries and calling for a ban on the practice. HOME pointed out that though ferrying people on lorries is prohibited under Singapore’s Road Traffic Act (RTA), an exception is made for workers.

HOME consulted migrant workers, business owners, and medical professionals and collaborated with Singapore Management University students on tackling the longstanding issue of unsafe worker transport.

As one Bangladeshi worker said in a discussion held by HOME, “No space is safe in the lorry.”

Another underlined the space constraints and consequent dangers of lorry transport, saying, “[With] Twenty-four people and their harnesses, and chemicals, ladder [on board], there is hardly any space for us. We sit on our materials and wherever we find space between the materials —and it is not always 24 people; sometimes, it is 26; sometimes, even 29 people are pushed into the lorry. We have to sit on our tools . . . Things fall down at sharp turns, we get hurt.”

The group also looked into the arguments presented against an outright ban on lorry transport as well as key developments on the issue from 1984, when the RTA was amended, to 2023, when there were two serious accidents involving lorries. This resulted in 37 workers, the majority of them migrants, getting sent to the hospital. In the wake of these accidents, around 100 individuals and civil society groups signed statements calling for the government to ban lorry transport.

HOME has come up with the following recommendations:

1. Banning lorry transport, although this should be carried out with advance notice and phasing in
2. Providing transition support to companies through subsidies and grants
3. Setting up dedicated bus companies and supporting individual firms that would recruit and train bus drivers
4. Tightening current regulations and compiling statistics on lorry accidents and regulatory infringements to inform the next steps
5. Subsidising travel passes for public transport for migrant workers
6. Incorporating the housing and transport needs of migrant workers into urban planning

HOME quoted another migrant worker from Bangladesh as saying, “Safety is important because if I am safe here, my family will be safe. If I am not safe, if I am not secure, or if I am injured, my family will also suffer. If I am injured at work, then it becomes very uncertain as I am not earning, there is no income. I cannot take care of my family.”

The featured image above is from the Instagram account Humans Not Cargo. /TISG

Read also: Thousands sign petition asking LTA to make safe transport mandatory after photos of migrant workers in lorries during rain circulate