Fair Trading warning on electrical safety

Does that mean I can shoot you?

mik

However, the media release rather glosses over the fact that two of the fatal accidents involved people who were not doing something for which they needed an electrician's licence, and one may not have been. One is attributable to someone doing something that was careless or just plain stupid (working on live wiring), and only one is clearly attributable to incorrect wiring work, and for all we know that may still have been done by a licensed electrician.

Of the non-fatal accidents, the vast majority involved network operator cabling, and unless unlicensed people are the habit of attempting DIY stuff on the network operator's side of the meter, it seems likely that these are also incidents where the person was doing something for which an electricians licence was not required.

There may be a valid reason for requiring people to have an electrician's licence before they do electrical work, but this data doesn't provide it.

Sylvia.

Further to that, I spent a fair amount of my working career checking electrical contractors' work, and I can honestly say that some of them were sloppier than "backyarders" I know.

My BIL holds a contractor's licence, and with a colleague he retrofitted RCD's and MCB's to the MIL's house to replace the olde porcelain fuse panel. When they recently had breakers trip (BIL away in N-W) I got called to check it out. Non-compliance was evident in the RCD confuguration although not the cause of the tripping. Had the supply authority inspected, this job would have been snagged. But they only inspect a small percentage, and to be honest I don't even know if the BIL ticketed the job.