OKP shares extend slump, wiping S$18.5m from its market value

SINGAPORE — The share price of the holding company for Or Kim Peow (OKP) Contractors — which bagged the contract for the construction of the Upper Changi Road East viaduct that collapsed last Friday — continued to tumble yesterday, wiping off about S$18.5 million from the market value of the firm since the accident.

Hours after the pre-dawn accident last Friday, which killed one worker and injured 10 others, OKP Holdings group managing director Or Toh Wat submitted a request for a trading halt of its shares on the Singapore Exchange.

By the time trading was halted, the shares had already fallen 8.1 per cent to 39.5 cents each.

When trading resumed yesterday, the shares opened sharply lower at 35.5 cents and continued to fall to an intraday low of 34 cents, representing a near 14 per cent slump. However, they clawed back some of the losses to close at 37 cents, or a decline of 6.3 per cent.

That gave it a market capitalisation of just over S$114 million.

At about 3.30am on Friday, OKP Contractors had been performing works to cast the decking for the new viaduct when a section between two piers collapsed.

The company had snagged the tender for the project in 2015 with a bid of S$94.6 million. Just three days before the collapse, OKP Contractors was convicted and fined for separate workplace safety lapses and a worker’s death in 2015.

The Ministry of Manpower had also blacklisted the firm between January and April this year.

The company and its safety coordinator and site supervisor, Victor Tan Kok Peng, were fined S$250,000 and S$12,000 respectively for the 2015 accident, in which four workers plunged 6.4 metres to the ground as the section of the working platform they were standing on under Yio Chu Kang Flyover dislodged. One worker died and the other three suffered fractures and contusions.