A Kaitaia company has been fined $30,000 on convictions arising from the injury of an employee at Mangamuka last year.
Morton Logging (2008) Ltd was fined $15,000 on each of two convictions, failing to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of an employee and failing to take allpracticable steps to ensure that an employee was adequately trained, when it appeared before Judge Greg Davis in the Kaitaia District Court last week.
Both offences carry maximum fines of $250,000.
The court heard that breaker out Joel Allen suffered a severed bowel, crushing of his legs and pelvis, bruising and lacerations when he was struck by a moving log and jammed against a tree stump while working at Mangamuka on September 20 last year. (Breaking out is the process of extracting logs to a cleared site using a fixed mechanical hauler and an elevated steel cable. The breaker out's job is to hook the cable to the log, the hauler operator, at an appropriate signal, then tightening the cable and pulling the log out).
According to the summary of facts Mr Allen and another trainee, Joshua Bills, had just hooked up a log. Mr Bills gave the signal to the hauler operator, the cable tightened and the log began to move. Mr Allen was walking to a safe place when it struck him from behind and pinned him against a stump.
The company had failed to comply with the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992's requirement to take all practicable steps to ensure that Mr Allen was supervised by a knowledgeable and experienced person. Such a person was working on the site but was operating another machine and was not able to provide proper supervision.
Mr Bills was a trainee, and not fully qualified to supervise.
Nor had the company adequately trained Mr Allen in the safe way of doing his job.
