Man Falls from Fork Lift
General operative Manzar Hussain, was injured while working at Lynwood Products at Hopwood Lane, Halifax. Mr Hussain was emptying some rubbish into a skip while balancing on the forks of a fork lift truck to give him the extra height he needed to reach the top of the skip.
After he fell a container he had been emptying fell on top of him causing him further injury. Mr Hussain had been instructed to separate non-recyclable from recyclable rubbish and dump the non-recyclable waste in the skip.
According to the Health and Safety Executive, in the two years that Mr Hussain had worked at the company he had never received any training or instruction on how to empty rubbish into the skip and had improvised his own way to reach the additional ten feet to the top of the container.
He collected the waste placed it into neither a cage or rubbish container, he then raised the full container or cage by using the fork lift. He then climbed up the fork lift to tip the rubbish directly into the skip.
The company admitted that he had never been shown how to empty rubbish into the skip and had never received any formal training for diving a fork lift truck. The company subsequently received a £12,000 fine when they appeared at Calderdale magistrate’s court.
This kind of incident is all too common. Avoid falling into the untrained employee trap by contacting the training experts Workplace Law and find out about their NEBOSH distance learning course.
