The Justice and Peace Commission within the Archdiocese of Malta made a number of recommendations regarding increased safety and fairness for workers in the construction sector.

The Commission carried out interviews with various people involved in the sector, a number of whom were anonymous, and it painted a revealing picture of the industry. One issue it highlighted was the ‘ejja ejja’ culture.

A person who had been working in the construction industry for nearly 10 years said that the ‘ejja ejja’ culture “clearly prioritises money and profit-making over the health and safety of construction workers who end up working ‘for speed,” the report read.

Construction is everywhere in Malta. Wherever you look, one finds tower cranes in the distance, dust from construction, signs of roadworks taking place. But just because there is a lot of construction work does not mean that construction companies should push for speed at the expense of safety and doing a good job. This is not to say that all contractors do this, but those that do are in the wrong. Contractors who work with such a state of mind will not only do shoddy work, but could also be putting the lives of workers at risk. Worker safety must be a priority.

“They don’t care about the safety, about the worker. They care about how we do the work properly and fast. All he cares about is fast, fast, fast,” one worker told the commission, adding that the supervisor’s job is “to make you angry and push you”, without any care for safety. The fact that a worker believes his boss doesn’t care about his safety is telling of the situation in the sector. This needs to change. An architect, who works with a construction company, told the Commission that “the commendable efforts which, in some quarters, we have witnessed in recent years to improve health and safety at the place of work, have been practically nullified by the current boom in construction and the tight deadlines associated with construction”.

The Malta Developers Association welcomed the study, but also had some issues with it. “The study seems to attribute most problems to pressure by developers, be it private or public, in relation to time constraints. Nevertheless, it does not make the point that these are most of the time caused by contractors who bite more than they can chew, and who do not respect agreed timeframes thus leading to substantial losses for developers. This was one of the reasons why the MDA has lobbied for years for a licensing system for contractors,” it said.

If work will take longer in order to ensure better safety on the job then so be it, that’s what has to be done. Contractors should be more upfront with clients about this when discussing deadlines prior to taking on a job, that is only fair. Contractors must also be realistic when discussing deadlines, and not make promises they will be unlikely to keep without having to use this ‘ejja ejja’ mentality. At the same time developers must be more accepting that a project could take longer if there are health and safety concerns which need to be acted upon. Workers’ safety comes first, everything else is secondary.

As for the introduction of contractors’ licenses, one hopes that this will help in terms of enforcement, given the possibility that contractors could lose their licence if they don’t abide by regulations. But enforcement by the authorities must be strict, otherwise nothing will improve. At the same time contractors should also take it upon themselves to implement the best practices which go beyond what would be minimum standards. There are some contractors who do this and they should be commended.

One of the eight recommendations by the Commission is to increase resources for the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) and establish a one-stop phone number to report all construction related complaints. This is a pertinent point, especially since the issue of the OHSA’s understaffing was mentioned by interviewees in the report. Among other things, the Commission also made recommendations regarding making insurance coverage a prerequisite for contractors seeking to be licensed and another is to strengthen to provision of health and safety courses.