Province fined $800,000 for sloppy traffic control at BC music festival

A provincial government department has been fined $783,000 by WorkSafeBC for doing a sloppy job at traffic control.

According to a Jan. 21 WorkSafeBC penalty notice, the unnamed government Ministry was directing traffic at a music festival in the Kootenays when it made a series of errors.

The WorkSafeBC notice is incredibly limited on information and only said it took place in Salmo but didn’t say when the incident occurred.

The notice said the Ministry turned up at the site and found traffic for the music festival stopped on the highway.

While a private traffic control firm was in charge, the ministry didn’t like what they were doing.

Thinking it could do a better job, it took over.

“The Ministry workers were not trained Traffic Control Persons and had been directing traffic from an unsafe position on the highway,” the WorkSafeBC penalty notice reads. “In addition, the employer had not provided specific direction to its workers on how, and under what circumstances, they should perform traffic control.”

WorkSafeBC found that the Ministry failed to provide its staff “with the information, instruction, training, and supervision necessary to ensure their health and safety.”

It said the Ministry failed to ensure that workers did not “direct traffic contrary to a control device or from a position open to traffic flow.”

Describing them as both high-risk violations the Ministry was issued a $783,068 fine.

No other information is provided in the penalty notice.