15 December 2023

WorkSafe is cautioning that worksites are not the place for childcare, in response to the case of a five-year-old being run over in a forklift incident at a Hawke’s Bay orchard.

When childcare fell through, the boy was taken to the orchard in January 2022 by his grandparents who worked there. He was told to stay inside the packhouse on a couch. Unfortunately, he wandered from that spot and into the path of a reversing forklift being driven by a 14-year-old worker.

The victim survived but suffered significant complex fractures to his hip bones and was hospitalised for a month. The orchard owner has now been sentenced for health and safety failures.

A WorkSafe investigation found the victim was under limited supervision as the caregivers were busy working. The forklift was poorly maintained with no basic safety features like reversing lights, mirrors, flashing lights, or a horn. The driver was underage, and the site had no written traffic management plan for forklift use.

“Naturally children want to explore, try new things, and push boundaries. As we head into the holiday season, this case is a reminder that children are always at risk on worksites and should not have been present,” says WorkSafe’s area investigation manager, Paul Budd.

It was common for the young driver to be behind the wheel, and the owner had not done enough to establish his age. Businesses must remember that workers under 15 are not allowed to drive vehicles on worksites.

Risk management by the business was verbal and informal because of language barriers.

“It’s not good enough to say that your risk management is verbal because employees cannot always read English. Translating your safety information for workers, if necessary, goes a long way to keeping them safe.”

“Better traffic management would also have made a big difference to safety. This could have included exclusion zones to separate vehicles from people, the use of barriers when operating the forklift, clear signage, and separate entry and exit points for people and vehicles,” says Paul Budd.

Children are now prohibited from the orchard during operating hours, and the victim has made a full recovery.

Read more about young people in the workplace

Background

• Kylie and Simon Halford Partnership was sentenced at Hastings District Court on 14 December 2023.
• A fine of $7,000 was imposed, and reparations of $25,000 ordered
• Kylie and Simon Halford Partnership was charged under sections 36(2), 48(1) and 48(2)(c) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015:
  • Being a PCBU having a duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the health and safety of other persons, namely children at the orchard packing warehouse, is not put at risk from work carried out as part of the conduct of the business or undertaking, namely orcharding, failed to comply with that duty, and that failure exposed other persons to a risk of death or serious injury.
• The maximum penalty is a fine not exceeding $1.5 million.