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The death of two construction workers, buried under debris after a fresh concrete ceiling gave way in Hamrun last Tuesday, is tragic confirmation of the fatal (and fatalistic) attitude with which occupational health and safety is being treated across the board.
Only last Sunday, we dedicated our leader to Malta’s precarious occupational health and safety standards, in the wake of the death of an Enemalta worker who fell from a ladder. Naturally, there is always a tendency to be wise after any tragic event. But on this occasion, did we really need the additional deaths of two construction workers in Hamrun to drive home the point that our standards of safety on high-risk worksites are woefully inadequate? The writing has been on the wall for far too long.
There are currently an estimated 10,000 construction sites on the island, ranging from mega-projects involving hundreds of workers, to minor domestic works in private residences. In view of the government’s recent (and unreasoned, in this newspaper’s opinion) decision to extend the development zones still further, we can only expect the number of construction projects to increase in future.
Meanwhile, in the last seven years Mepa has approved almost 50,000 new dwellings, and statistics published in MaltaToday’s first midweek edition last Wednesday suggest that the current construction boom shows no signs of abating.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the above, construction site fatalities account for a large percentage of Malta’s total workplace deaths: 83 per cent in 2004, according to a Building Industry Consultative Council report.
It was therefore an unpleasant surprise to discover this week that, despite the evidence that health and safety issues continue to be ignored by many workers and employers alike, Parliament has unaccountably dragged its feet on a piece of legislation aimed specifically at improving health and safety on construction sites.
Tabled in 2004 – a year when 10 out of 12 workplace fatalities occurred on construction sites – the bill was aimed at establishing a number of procedures which would have instilled greater discipline among building contractors. Three years have since elapsed, and no legislation has been forthcoming. A ministry spokesman told our journalist claims that the consultation process is still ongoing; however, it has since transpired that the last meeting on the subject took place over a year ago.
At this point, a number of questions need to be asked. Admittedly the construction lobby has time and again proved to be immensely influential in this country: a fact that can be attested by any number of anomalous political decisions aimed at retroactively sanctioning building illegalities, among other dubious practices. But can it be that construction magnates and contractors are powerful enough to stall such timely and necessary legislation… even at the cost of a mounting building boom death toll?
On another level, it remains a fact that government’s own fragmentation has also contributed to a sense of permanent inertia on these and other issues. Consider, for instance, the impossibly complicated network of ministries, authorities and departments governing the construction industry. Work permits and occupational safety fall under Education and Employment Minister Louis Galea; civil protection under Home Affairs Minister Toni Borg; planning regulations under Environment Minister George Pullicino, and the Building Industry Consultative Committee under Resources Minister Ninu Zammit. This cacophony of responsible entities is doing nothing to instil responsibility and enforcement. In fact, it has succeeded in achieving quite the opposite.
As things stand, the latest development in the field comes from the Environment Ministry, which has finally issued draft construction site environment regulations for public consultation. Once again, however, nobody knows for how long they will remain in draft format.
The regulations are welcome, but one can only applaud them once they are enacted in law and thoroughly enforced. Until then, they remain meaningless, like all the other drafted reports, with the only stark reality to emerge once again in another tragic, unnecessary and avoidable fatality or serious injury on the workplace.
The time has clearly come for an overhaul of our modus operandi.
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