There are many things which serve as kind of constants in the Maltese news cycle.  One of those, sadly, is accidents at construction sites.

Week after week we receive press releases from the police telling us of an accident – generally a fall from height – which occurred at some construction site in some place around the island.  Sometimes the worker involved suffers grievous injuries, sometimes serious injuries, sometimes worse than that.

Indeed, on Friday, a 52-year-old Georgian man fell three storeys to his death while he was working in a construction site in Qormi, becoming the latest fatality related to the construction industry this year.

It is a known fact, even stated by the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA), that the construction industry is the least safe industry to work in, with the industry accounting for the majority of workplace deaths in 2021.

And yet, nothing seems to change.  Workers continue to fall to potentially life changing injuries or to their deaths, and yet besides the OHSA dutifully opening an investigation into each case, we hear of nothing to impose any sense of change or enforcement of the most basic safety measures.

Over the years, we have seen a drive by the authorities to have more safety on workplaces. More awareness has been raised on how both the employer and the employees must take extreme care when it comes to protection. We are told that inspections are carried out regularly although, as we all know, it is impossible for the Occupational Health and Safety Authority to monitor all dangerous sites around the clock.

However, scaffoldings continue to sway in high winds, wooden planks give way, and ladders are turning out to be instruments of danger. Workers are seen without safety helmets, others do not wear harnesses when carrying out a job which requires one, and machinery is not properly maintained.

And, save for some sad reactions on social media, nothing tangible actually changes.

It’s high time that the authorities truly do clampdown on unscrupulous building contractors who continue to not enforce the most basic safety procedures for their workers. We all remember the shocking case of Lamin Jaiteh – a Gambian worker who fell at a construction site and was left on a pavement by the contractor he worked with despite the fact that he had a broken back.  He testified in court that he hadn’t even been given a harness to use on site.

The OHSA likely does its best with the limited resources it has, but there’s only so far one agency can go. Even more so when they are dealing with contractors who think the world revolves around them so much that they think it’s okay to physically attack an OHSA, as happened in the case of a health and safety project supervisor called to a site over safety concerns there last month.

Before the government sends a statement of intent in the form of introducing harsh measures for those who do break the law and not provide the proper conditions for their workers – measures in the form of heavy fines, and potentially even the withdrawal of any license which allows them to work – then the situation won’t change.

The authorities regulating the construction industry similarly need to be beefed up with additional manpower and resources.  Only then will we see a reduction in these accidents.