Oh God, we’re here once again. After another shocking side effect of a construction industry that doesn’t want to improve, we are faced with the same rhetorical questions and misled assumptions about an industry that affects every single one of us.

This time, the canary in the coal mine is a human being who was discarded as simply as those same canaries once their purpose was fulfilled. This is only one of the few stories that actually makes the news.

Pointing out the massive faults in this industry is not an attack on the people that operate in it. If anything, this might save their lives. I work in this industry, I live off it but, besides an innate wish to survive till I’m old, I also have ambitions of higher standards than the current ones.

“Not enough enforcement” is a common reaction. The prerequisite to enforcement is to have standards to enforce. In a site where anyone and everyone can enter, what’s there to enforce?

Proponents of the status quo will point towards recent legislation which was a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden spat of building collapses in 2019. These were solutions that ignored the core problem. They were the equivalent of plastering a collapsing wall. I have nothing against the wall being plastered and painted but it is infuriating that the wall is allowed to collapse behind it.

All these laws did (as we had forewarned) was to add more confusion about responsibilities on sites and to create an environmentally concerning amount of paperwork and reports which are meant to be instructions to site workers. These are the same site workers who might not be able to speak English, let alone understand the technical implications.

The MDA distanced itself from the contractor who allegedly left an injured human on the roadside by saying that he is not a registered contractor. This is completely true, since no single contractor is registered. No registry for contractors exists. None. This lack of a legal register is a serious problem and we desperately want one.

The MDA might be referring to its members, which is its prerogative. This membership does not come with any recognised standards, expectations, consequences or legal requirements. The only entry requirement we are aware of is a small fee and your name is added to a list filed somewhere. What would have changed if he was on the list?

I support the idea of an organised association of developers but their register of members does not help anyone. Indeed, the ombudsman concluded that calling this list a registry is illegal. As far as I know, the MDA has repeatedly agreed to an official register and welcomed this idea. What would this be?

It is the building regulator’s role to hold, fill and strike off names from this registry. Such a list would be publicly accessible so that Joe Public will instantly figure out that WeBuildDevelopments Ltd has 15 employees who have safety training and is registered at a particular address by these two people while AmateurBuildsCompany consists of nothing more than a school-van driver who decided to subsidise his summer income by undercutting the former with his truck and day-crew he collected from Marsa in the morning.

I think we can all agree that a contractor should be responsible for his workforce- Christopher Mintoff

Anyone not on the list would not be able to operate a site.

Let us remember that the bar of entry to be a waiter is a food handling licence. The bar of entry to be a contractor is none. To be a project manager; none. To operate a crane or excavator, none. To erect scaffolding, to use heavy plant, to demolish buildings, to erect steel, to clear a site, to project manage its operations none. A baseline is required.

Contractors should be expected to have basic literacy to be able to read the reports we write for them. Excavator drivers should have a basic understanding of how foundations work before they are allowed to dig at them beneath third-party walls. I would expect that every single person who enters a construction site, all, have a basic competency of how a site operates, what danger exists and what signs mean before they step into it.

There does exist a mason’s licence but this ignores 80 per cent of the skills required on a site, does nothing for safety and is not applicable to all other workers there.

Will improved safety standards increase the cost of construction? Probably but what’s the alternative? Would you sleep well knowing that your second property was subsidised by the lives of workers and neighbours and the traumas of their families? There are many other factors which are increasing pressures on the market and higher standards is one of the few acceptable ones.

Will improved standards have an impact on the quality of the built environment? Yes, and how. By having competent and trained people on site, the quality of work will improve to the benefit of the residents to live in it and to maintain it.

I think we can all agree that a contractor should be responsible for his workforce. Frankly, if you’re confident enough to present yourself for a role, be it contractor, builder, tile-layer, excavator, etc., you should, at the very least, be able to legally prove that you have very basic technical competencies.

In mid-2019, the government accepted the idea of introducing a registry for contractors and announced that it would be set up. Since then, we have managed to vaccinate the whole population against a virus that was still contemplating to evolve and move onto its first human. Yet, this basic list of contractors could not be put together.

The advantages to having a basic entry-level for everyone that works in this industry are overwhelming. These are economic, social, moral, competitive, environmental, legal and the general well-being of the workers and the public. That’s what makes the reluctance to introduce this basic first step so disheartening and infuriating.

Frankly, anything that is said that distracts from this first crucial step in reforming our industry is just a smokescreen.