No matter what is claimed about how construction firms in this country now show a greater respect towards building regulations, the suspicion remains. The accident rate on construction sites has continued to increase, not only because sites have multiplied, but also because there has been a rise in the number of foreign workers involved in this work.
It might be that since it is “only” “foreign” lives which are risking a bad accident during working hours, the urge to have safeguards against such outcomes gets blunted. How true is it that foreign workers accounted for most deaths in the construction industry during recent years? One must also ask: in how many of such accidents was responsibility for the accidents fully determined?
If it emerges as being a correct claim, the statement that we hardly care about the safety of foreign workers would hardly be an honourable thing to say about us as a nation. For no matter who it belongs to, the life of a human being remains priceless.
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Maltese journalism
I had an interesting meeting with representatives of the Malta Institute of Journalists. I was interested to learn their views about the state of the print and audiovisual media here.
Naturally they described how these means of communication face ferocious competition from the social media – facebook and the rest – which deliver news on a person to person basis. In our country too this is undermining traditional media, making them less viable. But we still need them. The situation here is more difficult for the traditional media, given their small scale and that of the country as a whole, which makes them more vulnerable.
Apart from the dark and tragic shadow thrown over Maltese contemporary life by the horrible murder of Mrs Caruana Galizia, from what I understood during our meeting, it is not possible to conclude that in past years Maltese journalism has found itself facing greater restrictions than it did previously.
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Hunting and trapping
During a BirdLife seminar held last week at the Salina reserve I reiterated views I have been explaining for years. Hunters and trappers in this country have the right to carry on with their traditional pastimes, under conditions that are well and stringently regulated.
The arrangements made for them when Malta joined the EU as a full member were not to their benefit; to the contrary. However these arrangements are now law and have to be respected. In future, further moves are likely to originate from the EU to limit the parameters within which hunting and trapping are being practised. There will be a need to explain the position of both seriously and intelligently.
Despite the controversy that prevails between those who put the preservation of bird life as their top concern, and hunters and trappers, both sides have converging interests on which they could cooperate. For instance, the greatest threat to European birds appears to arise from the use of pesticides. The latest studies show that the population of insects in Europe is being exterminated.
Insects are a main source of food for many birds.