Devastated family members have told a Melbourne court of their pain at losing Rasta Kemp, who died in a 2018 workplace incident in Benalla aged just 24.
D&R Henderson Pty Ltd was sentenced in the Melbourne County Court after pleading guilty to two charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act for failing, so far as reasonably practicable, to provide and maintain a safe workplace.
Summarising the case, Judge Michael Cahill said company director David Henderson had written to Mr Kemp’s wife following the incident, where he said the tragic loss of Rasta had left everyone at D&R Henderson with a great sense of shock and sorrow.
Mr Cahill said the company paid Ms Kemp a year of Mr Kemp’s wages and established a $100,000 fund to assist with his son’s medical and education expenses following his death.
In victim statements, Mr Kemp’s family described him as an amazing dad who was nice to everyone and really funny.
“He wanted to be a presence in his young son’s life, that his father never was for him,” Mr Cahill said.
“He cared greatly for his family, which was very close, and they have all suffered greatly with his passing.”
D&R Henderson was fined $275,000 for failing to maintain systems of work that were safe and without risks to health and $75,000 for failing to provide information, instruction and training to enable workers to perform their work safely and without risks to health.
The court heard the worker was unloading timber from conveyor belts when his clothes were caught on a pin protruding from the belts’ rotating drive shaft, and he was dragged into the plant and impaled on a nearby stillage.
A WorkSafe investigation found it was reasonably practicable for D&R Henderson to eliminate the risk to workers by fitting a cover over the drive shaft or repositioning it so workers could not come into contact with it.
Investigators also found that there was no safe system of work for realigning conveyor belts, with workers undertaking this task while the machine was powered when it was reasonably practicable to first lock out the machine.
WorkSafe investigators found that it would have been reasonably practicable for the company to instruct employees about the risk of becoming entangled on the rotating shaft, where to position themselves to avoid this and to contact a supervisor to arrange repairs if the belts came off the conveyors.
WorkSafe executive director health and safety Narelle Beer said the risks of plant and moving machinery were well known as a major cause of workplace deaths and serious injury in Victoria.
“Employers and duty holders must do everything they can to eliminate or reduce the risks to workers from moving machinery, including guarding or physical separation and instructing workers in their safe operation,” Dr Beer said.
“Tragically, in this case, a worker has lost his life in an incident which could have been avoided had proper safety measures been in place.”
Labour hire company Recruitment Select Pty Ltd, which provided the worker to D&R Henderson, was previously fined $50,000 over the incident after pleading guilty to a single charge of failing to provide and maintain a safe system of work.