Works Minister Fadillah Yusof said if investigations find that the contractors had been negligent in ensuring safety at the construction work site, they would be prosecuted under the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Malaysia Act 1994 (Act 520).

He said certain sections in the Act provided for a penalty of up to RM500,000 or imprisonment of up to two years or both.

“If found guilty, the contractors will be blacklisted,” he said when replying to a supplementary question from Hee Loy Sian (PKR-Petaling Jaya Selatan) at the Dewan Rakyat today.

Hee wanted to know what action the ministry would take following the incident on Nov 4 which killed Abd Rahim Abd Rahman, 51, and his wife Nurhayati Rosli, 46, an Indonesian national.

The Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) had ordered that construction works be stopped immediately to allow it to investigate the incident as well as by CIDB.

Commenting further, Fadillah said observations by the project’s local chief engineer found that the piling crane overturned while it was being moved for piling to another location.

“The incident could have been caused by the piling machine going out of alignment from the support steel plate,” he said.