Judicial commissioner Moses Susayan said the couple, Ahmad Azib Ahmad and his wife Intan Shahrazad Azri, had proven their case on the balance of probabilities.

The court ruled that the plaintiffs were entitled to compensation because, as parents, they had lost a child due to the failure of Teluk Intan Hospital’s administrators to follow a safe system of work for pregnant women in a government hospital.

Susayan said the law states that Intan’s employer must conduct a risk assessment to determine if she was suitable to continue her work under the existing conditions when she became pregnant.

“They failed to do it, but instead shifted the burden on her to produce a written request,” he said.

In his decision delivered to the parties online, Susayan also awarded the couple RM40,000 in costs.

The suit was filed against the government and the administrators of Teluk Intan Hospital for violations of Sections 15 and 16 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), as well as for common law negligence.

Section 15 of OSHA, which covers public and private sector employers, states that they must provide a safe working environment for their employees.

Section 16 provides that employers must formulate suitable occupational safety and health policies at the workplace.

In their statement of claim filed in 2021, the couple said the defendants failed to conduct a risk assessment to determine if Intan could continue her work as an outpatient hospital attendant during the early stage of her pregnancy.

Intan said she had gone through an “overburdened workload” during her second pregnancy in late 2018 as the hospital administrators failed to provide her with a co-worker.

She said she had informed her superiors, but they only asked her to submit a doctor’s letter to state that she could only do light duties.

Lawyer PA Sharon appeared for the couple, while senior federal counsel Norazlinawati Arshad and federal counsel Siti Hanida Abdul Kadir acted for the government.