The Tax Cheapo

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recently pursued a case of negligence against the operations director of Butcher’s Pet Care Ltd., a pet food company, at Northampton Crown Court. Director Philip Thompson, who was also in charge of maintaining the health and safety of workers, was accused of violating Regulation11 (1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 to which he pleaded guilty. The court asked him to pay a fine of 10,000 pounds and an additional 4,000 pounds as costs.

John O’ Connor, a worker at the Butcher’s Pet Care factory, was operating a fully automatic palletising machine that is used to pass cans of pet food over conveyor belts and stack them in layers on the pallets. While in operation, the machine stopped working due to a wrongly placed pallet. Ideally, one should have switched off the power supply before accessing the machine. In addition, to stop wrongful operation, the machine should have been caged.

However, there was a gap in the machine’s fencing due to the stair rails, and workers had made it a common practice for the past two years to access the machine through this gap in order to fix minor operational problems. O’Connor did the same and repositioned the pallet, after which the machine started operating immediately, trapping him and crushing him to death.

HSE Principal Inspector for Northamptonshire, Neil Craig, while talking about this case pointed out that such cases of negligence were usually responsible for tragic accidents at workplaces. He said that O’Connor’s precious life could have been saved easily if Thompson had taken due care to fulfil his duties as the director of operations.

Craig also said that the accident was not a rarity, and that such cases often kept on happening due to the careless attitude of bosses. Craig added that the gap between the stair rails had remained unfenced for nearly two years and therefore the possibility of an accident was quite high. He felt that if O