Accountability for deaths in the building industry

Four deaths in one week. Four breadwinners abruptly and rudely killed in accidents. Another couple fighting for their lives at St Luke's Hospital. Four grieving families left alone to deal with the aftermath of their personal tragedy.

In the face of this terrible waste of life, we have to ask several questions. Where safety helmets and safety harnesses used? Who is responsible for their health and safety? Isn't anyone accountable?

In the world of the construction industry, a grim reality faces many construction workers. They need to support a family. The minimum wage paid to low skill workers elsewhere does not help them make ends meet.

Their only option is to work in the construction industry and risk their lives daily, for a better paid job. A higher wage is daily traded for a mined working environment. Every step they trod is a step into the darkness of death. A crane might collapse. In Malta, these monsters of rural development have a habit of suddenly falling over, crushing all those that lay in their path. A frail plank of wood used as a working platform might just swing or drop, throwing the workers it sustained to their death.

This is the grim reality in which construction workers toil each day. And if they complained about their working conditions, everyone knows what would be the next step of their employer.

Work practices used at the turn of the century continue to be used today... in the building of high rise structures. For quite a few contractors life comes cheep. All they have to do is just engage another worker the next day. It seems that we have come to accept that every major construction project (both public and private) must cost a life or two. After all life comes cheaper by the dozen.

The government is now spending more on its health and safety programme. What was once a government department has been finely spun into a autonomous agency costing the taxpayer much more. But is it delivering more? Of course, life has no price. But when it seems that more is being spent and even more said, must we not demand accountability for all that is spent and said?

Numerous press conferences, ministerial declarations and a new premises for the Health and Safety Authority are not being translated into safer conditions of work for construction workers. In spite of a decade of good intentions and little will, little has changed in the work practices of the construction industry.

It transpires that some employers calculate that implementing a safer working environment costs them more than losing a couple of working days due to death or injury.

Before this equation changes for the workmen, little will change in the work practices of the employer. Before employers become accountable and before this accountability will cost them dearly, they will have no incentive whatsoever to change. And, on the other hand, it is the duty of a costly Health and Safety Authority to implement and enforce the law which is supposed to be enabling its designated responsibilities.

Neither is European Union membership going to change all this. We have seen the government implement legislative changes on health and safety to bring our legislation in line with the demands of the EU. We have seen the government spend more on our new autonomous agency.

Is the agency itself accountable?

Are there fewer deaths occurring in the construction industry?

Is the taxpayer getting his money's worth?

Implementing change just to suit the legislative framework of the EU is certainly not giving answers and is most certainly not changing the daily toil of construction workers.

Time is ripe to start delivering!

Dr Chircop is the Labour Party's spokesman on social protection.