- Former diving superintendent Mohd Zalkarnain Mohd Salleh was working with a diving supervisor who was three days into his job
- He did not do anything when the supervisor knowingly failed to monitor the diver’s video and audio feed for almost six minutes
- The supervisor was discussing the next part of the dive plan with him when the diver drowned
- He also used forged foreign commercial diving certification to land the job
SINGAPORE — First, Mohd Zalkarnain Mohd Salleh used a forged certificate to land a job as a diving superintendent. Then a freelance diver drowned on the job when Zalkarnain and his subordinate, an inexperienced diving supervisor, failed to notice the man's frantic pleas for help via intercom.
On Wednesday, Zalkarnain, 55, pleaded guilty to one count of using forged documents and one count of abetting by illegal omission a rash act causing death. He was jailed for two years — one year for each charge.
The deceased, 33-year-old freelance commercial diver Jake Seet Choon Heng, was found floating in the sea off Sentosa two days after he went missing while working with Zalkarnain at Mola Subsea Services.
The incident took place at 1.39pm on May 5, 2018, when the diving team deployed by Mola was cleaning the hull of a cargo vessel called Jork, which was moored at Singapore’s Western Working Anchorage.
The court heard that the diving supervisor that day, Raden Roslan Mohd, 54 – who was three days into his job – was discussing the next part of the dive plan with Zalkarnain around the time that Seet drowned.
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The two men were in the firm’s “dive shack” where the communications equipment used to keep in touch with the divers was located.
Reconstruction from Seet’s video revealed that his 165m umbilical cord – supplying air to divers and containing cables feeding video and audio from the diver’s helmet to the diving boat – had become entangled with the seabed, preventing him from ascending.
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Jail for ex-commercial diving superintendent who failed to notice distress call from drowning diver
