Debated in Parliament on 6 Feb 2023.
Dr Tan Wu Meng asked the Minister for Manpower since 2017 annually (a) how many healthcare workers received compensation under the Work Injury Compensation Act for injuries arising in the course of duty; and (b) what were the 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile compensation amounts.
Table 1 shows the number of work injury compensation claims made by healthcare workers under the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA), from 2017 to 2022. There was a change in reporting methodology in 2020 and so the claims numbers before 2020 cannot be directly compared with those after 2020. Since 1 September 2020, employers have to report any instance of light duties or medical leave, for more complete reporting of work injuries. With better protections for workers, the number of work injury claims from healthcare workers have increased.
We have shown two sets of numbers in Table 1. The first applies the pre-2020 methodology across all the years and the second presents the numbers as reported from 2020 based on the new methodology.
The Ministry only tracks the lump sum compensation for work injury cases resulting in permanent incapacity or fatality. Due to the change in reporting requirements, median compensation amounts have decreased in tandem as there are more claims for smaller injuries under the new methodology. The compensation amounts awarded to healthcare workers for permanent incapacity and fatality at the 25th, 50th (median) and 75th percentiles are at Table 2 below.
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