A firm in Aberdeenshire has appeared in court after it breached health and safety laws when a worker’s gloved hand was pulled into a machine.
23-year-old Mariusz Toporek, who is originally from Poland but now lives in Macduff, was an employee of Macduff Shipyards Limited and working in its precision engineering department when the incident happened in March 2013.
Mr Toporek was working on a lathe at the time, which had been remotely set to a new diameter by a computer but he had switched it to manual mode and was finishing the pins off with an emery cloth when it got caught in the machinery and pulled his right hand in with it. He suffered strained tendons in two of his fingers as a result of the incident and a fractured bone in his hand, and needed to take four weeks off work after the incident.
An investigation was launched by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which found that the company hadn’t carried out any assessment of the risks posed to workers in the precision engineering department or the risks associated with the machinery operating within it. The operations manager responsible for the day-to-day running of the workshop had received no specific training for his role, the court heard and although available, no safer alternatives to the use of emery cloths – viewed by workers as normal practice – had been implemented or explored.
Macduff Shipyards Limited, of Aberdeenshire had two previous convictions for health and safety breaches, Banff Sheriff Court heard, which occurred in August 2000 and in December 1999. The company was fined £8,000 for this most recent incident after it pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.