Injured while working at home? You should be compensated

Employees in Singapore who get injured while working from home should be compensated accordingly, said Minister of State for Manpower Zaqy Mohamad.

“Work-from-home arrangements do not change an employer’s responsibility for work injury compensation,” said Zaqy during Parliament on June 4.

READ: MOM: Employees should continue WFH after circuit breaker

With the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) stating that working from home should be the default option for non-essential businesses, many employees are expected to continue doing so even after the ‘circuit breaker’ period ended on June 2.

And one of the issues raised was on work injury compensation when employees’ homes become their workplace.

“The key is to ascertain that the injury arose while doing work at home and not while performing non-work activities at home. This is a fact-finding exercise that is no different from all other WIC (work injury compensation) claims,” clarified Zaqy.

He added that work injury compensation insurance is purchased by employers and covers employees who are injured out of and during the course of doing work at home.

Zaqy also revealed that there have been two reported work injury cases since the ‘circuit breaker’ period which started on April 7, and that there have been no changes in the premiums for work injury compensation insurance.

“But so far you look at the valid claims in the past, they’ve been mostly minor injuries and so far no terminal capacity or no fatal cases,” he said.