Many many years ago this paper had given coverage to concerns, expressed mainly by one person regarding the stability or otherwise of Binja Buqana in Mtarfa.

In those days, this man was everywhere – on Xarabank, on the papers and speaking to whoever wanted to hear.

His gist was that the Binja, a new housing concept created at Mtarfa, had stability problems. He was right to be concerned, after all, he lived there.

Since the building was new and the PN administration of the time considered it to be a signal innovation, many did not heed this man’s repeated expressions of concern.

On the contrary, even those who lived in the Binja or around it, openly derided the man.

Nothing was done, except maybe some cosmetic changes.

Now, after all these years, a serious foreign and impartial company has concluded that indeed the structure is a shaky one.

Maybe we are still under shock as regards the stability or otherwise of the Mater Dei Hospital so maybe this development tends to go unnoticed.

The residents of the whole Binja, and especially this man, should get an apology for having to live in this shaky construction all these years.

As we are seeing in these controversies regarding Mater Dei Hospital and other construction jobs, it is always hard to prove that a building does not conform to the right specifications, especially as regards concrete.

We can see this happening as regards the public sector and maybe the same can be said about the private sector too.

As this paper said recently, maybe these controversies will make one and all more careful during construction work and the clients, public or private, more careful in vetting before paying.

There are normally many legal safeguards in every building contract but the difficulty comes when it comes to enforce them and to prove wrong construction.

As in everything else, the announcement by Minister Michael Farrugia of the conclusions by the foreign experts has seen a very skeptical response by the Nationalist Opposition. It would have been better for the PN to have waited until it examined the report and before it started to shed doubts about various aspects of the case. Granted the Binja was a creation of the PN administration and thus PN had to defend ownership of the new concept but considering these people have been made to live in what could have been dangerous conditions for all these years should have made PN hesitate before coming up with its counter-reaction.

Political parties have a tendency to shoot up and spout in defence of anyone attacked by the opposite party without going into the nitty-gritty of the case and understanding what went wrong. In this case, people, real people, were in danger all these years.