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The Pirkanmaan käräjäoikeus announced Pirkkala Construction Movement to be fined €1,505 daily for 35 days for a safety breach connected with failure to drop protection. The same employer received fines for failing protection in November 2015.
The Ikaalis skyscraper in September 2015 and the related failures of fall protection were discussed. The Labor Inspector, who came to the site, found that the roof had almost no sufficient anti-fall facilities, nor did the workers have access to safety harnesses and ropes. At the examiner’s request, harnesses and ropes were introduced. When the inspector the next day went to the same roof work place, the workers did not again have a fall protection at their disposal.
The occupational safety and health authority considered that on site there were repeated and, despite the inspector’s observation, a breach of occupational safety regulations regarding the implementation and supervision of fall protection. According to the regulations, if there is a danger of falling two meters above, there must be safety barriers or other protective structures on the site. If such use is not possible because of the nature of the work, it is necessary to use safety harness with its rope. Falling in the construction industry is a very typical risk of serious injury.
The defendant partially admitted the crime. He acknowledged that he was responsible for controlling the use of harness as the manager. He reported that the structures of the object were such that the barriers could not be attached to the edges of the roof in all respects. He argued that the use of safety harnesses and ropes was justified by the fact that the ropes are tangled with each other as workers move across the rooftop when the work progresses.
The District Court noted that in addition to the accolade of the Chief Executive Officer, the photographs taken by the inspector as evidence by the prosecution showed that the people working on the roof did not have safety harnesses or ropes in use. There were only a few roof structures in some parts of the roof, although work was done in the entire roof area. Measurement of the punishment included, among other things, the fact that a leader was previously punished for similar negligence.
