Around 100 contractors have already signed up to a new public registry, developers said on Wednesday.

Malta Developers' Association president Sandro Chetcuti said contractors were flooding in to the MDA offices in Pieta' to sign up to a newly-introduced register, which he described as the "first step" towards properly regulating the sector.

“To date, there was nothing stopping anyone from investing some cash and becoming a contractor and tearing down buildings and so on. Through this new register, the public will now be able to see who contractors are and that is a start,” he said.

The MDA’s ultimate goal, he said, is to see contractors require licenses, which they could lose – and therefore not be able to legally work on construction sites – if they do not follow the rules.

Contractors have been given until the end of September to sign up to the new register, as part of a reform of the building sector.

The reform came this month after a building collapse in Mellieħa and the wall of another fall apart in Guardamangia. In April, an apartment block next door to a building site had crumbled in the dead of night.

Flanking Mr Chetcuti, Building Regulations Office chief Michael Ferry said that once the registration period had ended, the next step would be to introduce a license requirement.

They would follow that up by creating a disciplinary council, which will be responsible for looking into cases where a contractor may have acted outside the law.

This, he said, was similar to the way architects risked losing their warrant if they were brought before a disciplinary board run by their chamber.

Mr Chetcuti said the MDA would be hosting training programmes to complement the licensing period.