Firm gets €42k fine after Irish backpacker scalped

An Australian labour-hire company has been fined AUS$60,000 (€42,000) after a young Irish woman was scalped by a fruit-packing machine. One of her ears was also ripped off.

Annie Dunne, from Nenagh, in Tipperary, was working in a packing shed in Shepparton, in Victoria, run by Kalafatis Packing, when she sustained the gruesome injuries.

According to WorkSafe, the body which enforces Australia’s health and safety regulations, two conveyers were being used to deliver pears for distribution. It emerged in court that workers were required to clean the conveyors while they were “energised and moving”.

“On November 7, 2015, an Irish backpacker (Annie Dunne) was assessing the underside of the second conveyor, in order to scrub its surfaces, when her hair became entangled in a rotating drive shaft and her scalp was torn from her head. She also had one of her ears torn off in the incident,” WorkSafe said.

T&R Contracting, the labour-hire company which had supplied Ms Dunne, has now pleaded guilty at a Victoria Magistrates Court to one breach of the country’s 2004 Occupational Health and Safety Act, “for failing to provide a safe working environment, by failing to provide instruction and training”. As well as the $60,000 fine, it was ordered to pay a further $8,000 in costs.

WorkSafe’s executive director of health and safety, Marnie Williams, said the circumstances of the incident were appalling: “This truly was a shocking incident that has changed this young woman’s life in a split second.

“It’s staggering that workers were expected to clean machines which were still in operation. All workers at this business were exposed to serious risks to their health and safety, because a safe system of work was not in place. There was no requirement to isolate the conveyors from energy sources, during the cleaning process, and no training provided to workers.”

Ms Williams said there was a blatant risk of serious injury from entanglement, crushing, or entrapment with both conveyors.

Kalafatis Packing Pty Ltd and Dimitrios Vagelatos, the manager of the packing shed, are both facing charges over the incident.

According to Australia’s ABC News, a crowdfunding campaign to help Ms Dunne with her recovery has raised more than $35,500 towards a target of $50,000.

The young woman had been trying to complete the requirements of rural employment — 89 days of regional work is required — to gain a second year on her working holiday visa when the accident happened.