$250,000 workplace fine

A PAKENHAM based company has been fined $250,000 for a workplace accident that left a young man in a permanent vegetative state.
Judge Chettle last week convicted and fined Asixa Pty Ltd after the company pleaded guilty to two workplace health and safety charges laid as a result of the 2006 incident.
He said although safety improvements were made after the incident, they should have been made sooner.
The injured man, from Keysborough, was an employee of a labour hire company but was a deemed employee of Asixa.
He was using a forklift to unload glass from a truck at Asixa’s warehouse, which was at the time in Quantum Close Dandenong.
The tines of the new forklift would not fit under the crate properly, and workers managed to lean the crate against the backrest of the forklift before the man reversed it into the warehouse, because the load obscured the operator’s forward vision.
At some point the forklift driver, then 21 years old, got off the machine to adjust the load, and it was then that it fell on him. He was found some time later.
The man did not have a certificate of competency to operate the forklift and he had not been given information, instruction or training on the forklift which was introduced to the workplace the day he was hurt, the court heard.
WorkSafe’s Executive Director John Merritt said the outcome was shocking and disastrous for the injured man and his family, and was a warning to everyone that the potential for workplace deaths were not the only issue to be addressed.
“Apart from the deaths, every year there are amputations of hands, fingers, arms and legs, people end up in wheelchairs, brain damaged or living with the assistance of machines.
“In terms of the outcome for the individual and their family, this is one of the worst cases that WorkSafe has had to deal with,” Mr Merritt said.
Mr Merritt said forklifts were among the most common and dangerous pieces of equipment in Victorian workplaces yet serious incidents still occurred, often because people had inadequate training.
“Although 56 people have died as a result of forklift incidents in Victoria since 1985, one third involving people hit by falling loads, there are many more where they suffer serious and often permanent, injury,” he said.
Asixa Pty Ltd has since relocated to Pakenham.