It has taken over five years for the courts to decide that two women died because of negligence and inadequate risk assessment during excavation work on a plot when an adjoining building in St Paul’s Bay collapsed.

Unfortunately, the news item did not specify what precise jobs were held by the two men who were found responsible and jailed.

The magistrate only had three men to judge (one was found not guilty) but surely the blame should have been spread wider?

If the two men either did not have the right expertise, or were lax over safety regulations, who gave them the job?

Was there no supervision by the developer’s representative, the architect and Mepa? Why did the police only prosecute the three men?

According to a comment online: “to work as a builder/stonemason you need to be licensed from the police and works department. To get this licence you have to sit for two exams, practice and theory in front of a board made up of five architects and a sanitary official.”

Which begs the questions:

1) Did these two guys have the necessary licence? If they did, then there is something not working with the examining board, because it has just been shown that these guys were negligent and had no idea of risk assessment.

2) If they did not have the licence, shouldn’t whoever hired them be prosecuted?

The commentator went on to say:“To give work to a qualified tradesman you have to pay the real price because a real tradesman doesn’t cut corners. But unfortunately, the majority prefer to give work to foreigners with cheaper prices because what matters to them are costs and costs only.”

Although I agree with the comment about developers cutting costs and there are a lot of foreigners on building sites (who I doubt have taken any exams, let alone had proper training), the guys prosecuted were not foreigners.

Neither were others, still in court facing charges, following another fatality in Sliema over nine years ago, which I have covered elsewhere. The relatives in that case are still waiting for closure as I write this.

They were due in court on Thursday morning but the case has now been deferred to 10 December. This construction tragedy happened four-and-a-half years earlier than the case that has just been concluded, where two men were convicted and jailed.

“Our mother was ‘accidentally’ buried under the rubble on 12 April 2000, nine-and-a-half years ago. Over the past two years, we have had our hearing deferred to a later date, sometimes three months down the line, even five months at times. Two years ago, we were told that sentencing was near, yet two years and a number of deferred hearings later, we are still at a ‘status quo’,” said her son.

So are the Courts not wanting “to signal that human life had value” in this case? Why is a case that should have been concluded years ago, still dragging on?

We certainly have our share of local cowboys. That was demonstrated by the fact that one of the two men had previous convictions for theft, causing slight injuries, taking a false oath, dangerous driving, causing damage to a vehicle and not in-forming the ETC of the employment of a worker.

The latter seems to indicate that this man was the contractor.

However, the convicted men are not the only cowboys. Those who either employ workers without the necessary expertise, or pressure workers to cut corners and hire people who they know have no problem with breaking the law, are just as bad, if not worse, because some are supposedly educated people.

When are we going to see such people prosecuted? Or is this just a screen to impress people that the authorities are taking some action?

Sending the small fry (unless one of the guys is a big-time contractor) to jail will keep the public happy, but really it is business as usual.

The following extracts of the magistrate’s suggestions from the 200-page judgement are an indictment of how things are run.

“Demolition and excavation work should be carried out only after clear and written

instructions were issued by an architect...”

This suggests this was not done.

“...The work should be carried out by contractors and workers who were properly trained and

certified for the work, and use appropriate equipment...” This means the developers are responsible for checking this.

“...A method statement should be approved by the authorities before work commenced, and no work should be carried out if defects were found on the site or adjoining property.”

These statements indicate that the men were not the only ones responsible. They suggest that architects are not giving sufficient and clear instructions and do not follow up to see that their instructions are properly carried out.

We also can surmise that training and certification is currently ignored. A commentator online, who has “been involved in various projects with various contractors large and small”, opined: “there are a large number of the old generation contractors who are not even aware that a building licence exists”.

Yet, I assume these men are all working.

The magistrate’s judgement also suggested “Contractors should be held liable if they went ahead with the work without prior approval or after ignoring professional advice.”

And “Mepa should also be empowered to revoke or suspend permits when safety conditions were not observed.”

Are we to understand that Mepa does not yet have that authority? If that is correct, what on earth do we have a Planning and Environmental Authority for, if it cannot even stop work if it is endangering the public?

Yet, I am sure that Mepa has stopped work in the past. So what is going on?

Besides, do the building and construction industry and the relevant authorities need to be told this by a magistrate?

Stricter controls on safety in the building industry is something the media has been harping on about for over a decade, after every tragedy and near miss.

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