Safework SA inspectors undertake a range of activities to ensure work health and safety compliance in workplaces. Their compliance and enforcement activities may lead to prosecutions being filed in the South Australian Employment Tribunal and the Magistrates Court, such as the recent case in which a packing company was penalised $90,000 for breaching the Work Health and Safety Act.

Pro-Pac Packaging (Aust) Pty Ltd were charged with breaches of s32 (as read with s19) of the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (SA) resulting from a worker sustaining serious injuries to his lower leg when he was struck by a moving forklift driven by a co-worker in June 2015.

The defendant failed to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, the provision and maintenance of a safe system of work in relation to the task which minimised the risk of pedestrians coming into contact with a moving forklift in the area at the site where the task was performed. 

 “At the time the incident occurred Mr A was reversing the forklift. He checked behind him, saw the area was clear then commenced reversing. While he knew that workers were in the vicinity he had no reason to believe that anyone was behind him. It appears that Mr B came from behind the reversing forklift and that is how the incident occurred,” the judge said.

“If proper exclusion zones and traffic management systems were in place and Mr A had been properly inducted in those systems, then his actions of going behind a reversing forklift may well have not amounted to an offence.”

The defendant failed to:

• Comply with his health and safety duty prescribed by s19 (1) of the Act because he failed to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, the provision and maintenance of a safe system of work in relation to the task which minimised the risk of pedestrians coming into contact with a moving forklift in the area at the site where the task was performed, being an adequate traffic management system which prohibited the use of forklifts in the area where the task was performed.
• Comply with his health and safety duty prescribed by s19(1) of the Act because he failed to ensure, so far as was reasonably practicable, the provision of information, training and instruction or supervision that was necessary to protect the worker from risks to his health and safety arising from the performance of the task at the site.

Pro-Pac Packaging (Aust) Pty Ltd were penalised $90,000 (after reduction of 40 per cent for early guilty plea) – levy and costs payable – Ss 19, 32 Work Health and Safety Act 2012, ss 10, 10C Criminal Law (Sentencing Act) 1988.