WorkSafe uncovers nearly 100 safety breaches in Preston

WorkSafe Victoria visited 105 workplaces in the Melbourne suburb of Preston between 14 and 18 March as part of its ‘Safer Work Zones’ campaign that helps small businesses identify basic safety issues and plans to help injured people back to work.

Seventy-two safety improvement notices were issued at 60 businesses with common and easy-to-fix issues identified. Another 22 issues were able to be dealt with on the spot. WorkSafe’s specialist return-to-work inspectors conducted 21 visits and issued 11 notices. These inspectors target businesses where someone has been hurt and check to ensure the required steps are being taken to ensure a return-to-work program is underway.

WorkSafe’s Manufacturing and Logistics Program Director, Ross Pilkington, said preventing most of the 3500 injuries reported to WorkSafe from businesses based in the City of Darebin over the past five years could have been prevented, adding: “It has cost $61 million to treat and rehabilitate people over the past five years as well as the commercial and incalculable human costs. It’s the legal responsibility of employers to provide and maintain a safe workplace and the best place to begin is to talk to the people who work for you about what needs to be done.

“WorkSafe can help, but identifying the basic safety issues which contribute to slips, trips and falls and manual handling injuries is not hard.”

Issues identified during the recent Preston visits included overloaded and damaged pallet racking, inappropriate use of ladders, mezzanine floors without edge guarding, poor chemical storage and unguarded machines.

WorkSafe inspectors will soon return to Preston to check that work required by the safety improvement notices was completed.

“In many cases safer workplaces can be created relatively quickly and at little cost, but as we’ve found from running this campaign across the state over many years, the same health and safety hazards keep turning up,” Pilkington said. “Just sitting down and discussing potential safety issues and how to eliminate them along with regular follow-ups is a good investment in the business. Although we have issued more notices than we would have liked, these businesses are now in a better position than before.”