Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.
After a series of building collapses last year left several families homeless, this time the tragedy that occurred in Santa Venera on Monday was far bigger.
A person died. A woman, a mother, was killed when the residence she lived in collapsed under her feet and buried her under piles of debris. She lived in a house next to a plot of land where a construction project is taking place.
When residences collapsed in Guardamangia, Hamrun and Mellieha last year, some thought we were lucky that no-one was injured or killed. Few spared a thought that the lives of the people who lived there were shattered and today, months later, they are still without a home. They certainly do not consider themselves as being lucky.
This time, apart from the physical collapse of a building, we have the added heartbreak of a husband who lost his wife and children who lost their mother.
Will this be enough, now, to serve as a wake-up call? Are we so selfish and greedy that it has to take a death of a person to lead to action? Or will we – as a society – quickly forget and move on, doing little or nothing until the next tragedy occurs and we start talking about it again?
The construction industry is under fire, once again, and no amount of nice words and good deeds will attenuate the anger we all feel. The Malta Developers Association has said it will provide temporary shelter to the people who were affected by Monday’s calamity, and said it has also suspended one of its members, who is an investor in the project.
We need much more than this. We need the responsible authorities to function properly, keep the industry in check and see that no other families will suffer the same trauma as the Pace family is going through right now. And it’s not sufficient to increase fines when there is a weak enforcement process, with contractors and others involved in the industry knowing that they can get away with whatever they do. A few thousands of euros here and there do not act as a deterrent to an industry which generates millions.
The Foreign Minister’s few sentences encapsulate all that we feel just hours after the accident. Writing on Facebook, Evarist Bartolo said that this is what happens when the culture of greed takes over the front row and puts people’s lives and health behind it.
Over the past few years the construction industry has been allowed to grow into the monster it is today. Everywhere you look, you see cranes. Roads are blocked, parking spaces taken up, pollution abounds, noise levels rise, environmental damage is caused and more of the countryside is taken up as buildings upon buildings are erected.
Malta has become a jungle of buildings, one whole huge eyesore than anyone looking out of an airplane window can see as the developers’ greed knows no bounds. Sometimes we wonder why tourists think of spending their holidays here.
Do not let Miriam Pace’s sacrifice be in vain. The void that she has left among her relatives and friends will never fill filled, but her death should spur all those in power to see that something is done, really done, to rein in an industry that, yes, creates jobs, but it is now costing lives too.