A lift contractor and his employee have been handed suspended prison sentences for "disregarding workplace health and safety laws" after a cargo lift gave way in 2018.
According to the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) the two men - 37-year-old employer Mark Grima and his 44-year-old employee Robert Borg - were responsible for the installation of the cargo lift off which a person had fallen in June 2018, the courts found.
Criminal charges against the pair, both from Gozo, were filed following an investigation by the OHSA, which had flagged "serious shortcomings" in the way the lift was installed.
Grima was handed a one-year jail term suspended for two years as the employer, while Borg was handed a six-month jail term suspended for one year as the employer who installed the lift.
According to the OHSA, the pair were found guilty of failing to ensure that the cargo lift was properly installed, of good and strong material and the necessary maintenance was carried out. They also failed to ensure that the cargo lift was checked by a competent person once every six months. Following such an inspection, a report had to be sent to the OHSA, as required by law.
As the employer, Grima was found to have failed to ensure that every repair, upgrade or alteration of parts of the cargo lift was carried out by a competent person in a timely manner and that all of the lift's openings were efficiently protected and locked, to prevent a person from falling off it or touching its moving parts.
Meanwhile Borg, as the person who installed the lift, was found guilty of failing to ensure that the lift was locked in a way that only allowed it to be accessed if its cabin or platform were in place.
The pair also failed to ensure that information on the maximum load that can be carried by the lift was clearly visible.
Grima was also found guilty of failing to protect the safety and security of his workers as well as those who could have potentially been impacted by the works, the OHSA said. He also failed to carry out regular safety evaluations.
Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech presided over the case.