Stephenville, N.L. — The Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Transportation has been fined $90,000 after violations stemming from the 2013 death of a worker who was painting road lines.
The department was convicted of violating five sections of the provincial Occupational Health and Safety Act, including failing to ensure the health of workers and failing to establish a safety program.
The violations came after 40-year-old Wayne Wall was painting lines on the Trans-Canada Highway several kilometres west of Flat Bay.
The workers were getting ready to paint a "yield" indicator when a pickup truck hit Wall and killed him.
In a written decision, the judge sentenced the department to pay a $15,000 fine, plus a 15 per cent victim fine surcharge, within 90 days.
The department was also ordered to set aside another $75,000, partly to pay for a third-party safety audit of its traffic-control programs and partly as donations to WorkplaceNL and Threads of Life.
The former is the province’s workers’ compensation authority and the latter is a national organization that assists families of victims of workplace tragedy.
The donation amount will equal $75,000 minus the cost of the audit. Twenty-five per cent of it will go towards the development of WorkplaceNL curriculum materials on traffic control for safety courses in high schools and the remaining three-quarters will go to Threads of Life.
Wall was a resident of Cape Ray, a small fishing community on the southwest coast of Newfoundland.
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