Old and young more involved in farm accidents

Farmers of retirement age are hurt more often than younger farmers, and WorkSafe says more care needs to be taken of children on farms.

In the rst three months of this year there were ve farm fatalities and 30 WorkSafe noti able injuries, with more fatalities on farms than any other industry.

ACC gures showed the number of farm injuries over the past ve years were on a downward trend, with 23,096 farming-related injuries in 2018 down to 22,631 last year.

Farmers aged 65 or older was the biggest group of claimants at 3429 last year. at compared to a total 7455 claims for those aged 25 to 60.

Worksafe general inspectorate manager for Hamilton and New Plymouth, Greg Peters, says injuries to children are unacceptable and that many farmers are not aware that a child doing work on a farm needs to be treated like a worker. ere is a di erence between when a farmer’s child, who rides a motocross bike across the paddock for fun, and when the same child uses the bike to round up cows, says Greg. e workplace is de ned by the work carried out at that time and farmers had responsibility to people irrespective if they’re family members or not, he says.

Farmer have a responsibility under the Health and Safety Work Act to make sure that a child was competent and trained to do tasks, had the right protective equipment and could do the job safely, says Peters. Work pressure often plays a role in accidents, he says.

Gerhard Uys/Stuff

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