Home Affairs and Justice Minister Tonio Borg has refused, once again, to disclose the number of inspections carried out on fireworks factories, after he was asked to table the list in parliament by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo.
It’s the latest refusal from the deputy prime minister after repeated queries from the press.
He told Bartolo he had “nothing to add” to a previous parliamentary question by the Labour MP tabled back in July.
“I find the minister’s non-answer totally unacceptable and bears the main characteristics of this government: arrogance, incompetence and unaccountability.
“It is the non-answer of a scared minister who has something to hide and for whom votes come before people’s lives and security. It also means that the minister does not want to admit that the inspection system regarding fireworks factories is neither efficient nor consistent, and the minister does not want to answer my question to conceal this.”
Borg has also repeatedly ignored queries by MaltaToday to disclose the number of inspections on factories carried out by the Explosives Committee, an indication which would reveal the level of safety standards in Malta’s fireworks factories.
“If he had a good system in place he would find it simply, very simple to give me the number of inspection visits carried out in the last four years, who carried them out, what the inspectors found on their visits and what steps they took to address the problems and shortcomings they found,” Bartolo said.
Last August, an email erroneously sent to MaltaToday by the Home Affairs ministry revealed the government’s deliberate attempt at keeping under wraps a recommendation by another committee, the Pyrotechnics Commission, to relocate two fireworks factories over safety threats to nearby residents.
The Commission had recommended that Borg closes down the San Mikiel factory in Lija – the minister’s home constituency – and the Sant Andrija factory in Luqa because of the danger they pose to nearby residents and property since they are not sufficiently distant from public areas as required by the law.
In the email addressed to Tonio Borg but mistakenly sent to this newspaper, communications coordinator Joe Azzopardi informed the minister that the MaltaToday journalist “keeps insisting, even after I sent the reply as drafted by Leonard Callus,” referring to the Prime Minister’s spokesperson, and continues: “Shall I ignore him?”
In a tragic accident on 27 July, the St Helen’s factory in Gharghur went up in smoke leaving five men dead. It was later revealed that a decision by the Fenech Adami administration in 2001 to allow the St Helen’s factory to continue operating despite being in breach of distance requirements, was taken without ever consulting the Explosives Committee – the government watchdog on fireworks factories.

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt