The Coroner’s Inquiry into the death of 58-year-old Singaporean man Abd Karim Ali was opened yesterday (3 May), and investigators from the Police Coast Guard (PCG), the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and Ministry of Manpower (MOM) testified during the hearing.
Karim, who worked as a service technician on board a ship, had gone missing after falling into the sea before his body was found on the shores of Batam, Indonesia.
His brother then read an article about an unidentified dead body that was found by the authorities and later went to a hospital in Batam to identify the body, which belonged to his brother, by his clothes.
Background
On 17 May 2022, Karim was part of a three-man crew performing maintenance work on a ship off a sector of the Singapore Port, at the Eastern Petroleum A Anchorage, and after finishing their work, were disembarking from the ship to a company boat to bring them back to Marina South Pier.
He was doing down the gangway beside the ship and trying to cross over into the company boat when he suddenly lost his balance and fell backwards into the seawater.
His crew members saw him fall into the water and shouted for help, with one of them then throwing a lifebuoy into the water which Karim then grabbed, but he then lost his grip on it as his crew members were trying to pull him back and ended up being swept away by the sea current.
The crew then tried steering the boat towards Karim to rescue him but couldn’t find him after he went under the water – he was wearing a life jacket at the time while his crew members weren’t.
Search and rescue operations were then conducted by the MPA and PCG but they still couldn’t find Kariom.
About 5 days later, Karim’s younger brother read an Indonesian news article about an unidentified decomposed body found along the Batam shoreline by the Indonesian authorities, with a request for information being put out to help identify the body.
Karim’s brother believed that the body was Karim and went to the Batam hospital where he recognised his brother’s clothes on the body.
The body was later confirmed to be Karim through fingerprint analysis in Singapore, and his cause of death remained unconfirmed.
Life jacket was not activated
Although Karim was wearing a life jacket at the time, it didn’t inflate. The life jacket that Karim wore was taken for testing and found to be functional.
It was not an automatically inflating life jacket and a manual lever had to be activated to inflate the vest, which would retain air inside for 24 hours.
Investigators revealed that the device to activate the life jacket was not activated and that Karim had likely failed to locate it or activate it.
An investigating officer from MOM testified that there were also no records showing that Karim was briefed on how to use the life jacket as well.
The MOM officer also highlighted how Karim’s two colleagues were not wearing life jackets at the time, which they were supposed to, and MOM was considering taking action against those involved.
Karim was also revealed to have been carrying a backpack of equipment that weighed about 10kg at the time, which had likely contributed to him falling into the water, as well as not maintaining a “three-point contact” which is having three out of his 4 limbs in contact with whatever vessel or ladder that he was climbing on.