"worker.. seriously injured when both arms were caught ...."

The importance of machine guarding is sometimes overlooked at aluminium plants. It is only when an incident occurs does the workplace realize that machine guarding would have either minimized or prevented the incident. Here is a recent incident highlighting the hazard of machine guarding.

A worker in his 20s, who started working at a metal processing plant only four months ago, got his arms caught in a machine and seriously injured.

It was a company belonging to the (company located in Eastern Asia), where fatal accidents occurred one after another this year.

Around 10:00 last night, a report was received that a 25-year-old worker named (omitted), who was working on unwinding an aluminum coil, got caught in a machine.

(The injured worker), who was seriously injured when both arms were caught between the machines, was rescued by firefighters and underwent surgery at a nearby hospital.

He had an accident while working to check and remove foreign substances with his bare hands in the process of pushing an aluminum steel plate into a machine.

Police officer said "Yes, that's how we heard the statement. They said they pushed things like foreign substances a little bit and worked like that."

The injured worker was a contract worker who started working at the factory four months ago, and was said to be on the verge of converting to a full-time job two months later.

(The company) said that the process (injured worker) was in charge of was not the work of checking foreign substances by hand, and that he would come up with measures to prevent recurrence along with the investigation.

An official from the (location name omitted) branch office of the Ministry of Employment and Labor

"(Due to the accident), we are currently conducting preventive activities for getting caught in (accidents) all over the country. If it recurs, it will be even worse. Go out to the site and see if safety rules are followed..."

The police and labor authorities said CCTV In addition to the exact cause of the accident, we plan to investigate whether the company properly conducted safety training.

We pray that the injured worker survives his injuries. We pray that his arms are not amputated and can be saved and overtime he can heal fully.

This was not the first time the worker performed this task in our opinion. The question we wonder was the worker trained to do that task. We pray he was not. If he was the question would be why?

We have visited countless plants and observed machinery operators performing task with their hands that should have been replaced with tools. A classic example would be clearing a shear press. A hand tool should be used so the worker never places their hand(s) under the press.

If we find out anything further on this incident we will post it.

Please comment.