Months of pressure seem to have finally generated a partial result for some 20 Enemalta employees who fear they may have come into contact with the deadly asbestos when they were dismantling the Number One boiler at the old Marsa power station although they were repeatedly assured the asbestos had been removed.

Last week, the lawyer representing the workers received a copy of certificates from Enemalta, which seem to prove the site is asbestos-free. The workers will get their first look at the certificates, which directly regard their own health, at a meeting being held on Tuesday.

The workers’ saga began two years ago when they were ordered to begin dismantling Number One boiler. Before that, a contractor with some British workers had gone on site and “removed” the asbestos. The Enemalta workers were told the site had been certified as being asbestos-free. However, when the hesitant workers demanded to see the certificates, they were told the manager had them and were threatened with being reported if they did not do the work.

After a whole year working on the plant, one of the employees noticed that the material they were removing looked like asbestos. The workers took a sample of the material to another company and it was found that it was in fact asbestos.

The General Workers Union took up the workers’ complaints and asked for air monitors, which were placed 50 metres apart. Some time later, management stopped the workers from continuing the job as it said asbestos had been found again.

A local contractor (Pikles), who could reputedly handle asbestos, was brought in during the night to clean up the place and it was then said he had cleared the whole site of asbestos.

But the workers, still sceptical of such assurances, were reluctant to continue the work. In the end, while the arguments why they should not do the work were going on, one of them went on site, found some material, and took the manager and the engineer with him to check it. It was checked under a microscope and again found to be asbestos. Work was thus stopped again.

Then a British contractor was brought in and the methods of his operation showed the workers how things should have been done right from the beginning. He closed off the whole area with plastic and, operating with great care and sophisticated vacuum appliances, thoroughly cleaned up the whole plant room because it was found that there was asbestos powder everywhere, the result of the earlier cutting up.

The Maltese contractor was again brought in and he dismantled the boiler – the work the Enemalta workers were supposed to do.

The Enemalta employees who contacted this newspaper, were very scathing about the Health and Safety Authority. They claimed they had contacted OHSA for eight whole months but never saw any OHSA representative on site. Every time the Enemalta employees called, the OHSA representatives would tell them they were working on the case but could not give them any details. The employees suspect that OHSA just phoned the CEO and asked him what procedures were being followed and accepted what the CEO said without checking for themselves.

Finally, exasperated and fearful, the workers engaged lawyer Dr Mark Attard Montalto who, on 21 August, wrote to Enemalta and demanded, in the name of the employees, that any medical expenses the workers might have, must be borne by the corporation.

The workers were X-Rayed and informed that nothing had been found in their lungs.

In a significant sentence handed down on Wednesday, the government, owner of the Malta Drydocks, was found responsible for the death of a worker from asbestos poisoning. The man, Joseph Fenech, worked at the dockyard from 1959 till he was boarded out in 1995 and died aged 55, as a direct result of exposure to asbestos at work.

The court, presided over by Mr Justice Philip Sciberras, put the case off till January, in the hope that the parties would reach an out-of-court settlement.