The government will be using contingency funds for NGOs to help rebuild the Kirkop fireworks factory that exploded last November, killing one man and injuring two others, Inclusion minister Julia Farrugia Portelli announced on Wednesday.
She said on Facebook that the government was helping rebuild the San Ġużepp fireworks factory through emergency funds managed by the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector.
Sources said the factory management will be given €10,000 from the contingency funds to clear the mess left behind when the factory exploded on November 26. The funds were allocated after the fireworks club filed an application.
The San Ġużepp fireworks factory on Triq Ħal Far was party destroyed after it was rocked by a series of explosions on November 26 at around 7am. Leonard Camilleri, 64, a keen fireworks enthusiast who also served as the factory’s licensee for several years, was killed in the explosion.
He had quit that role some years back and was less involved in the factory’s work in the past years. But his passion drew him back to the fold, and he had recently begun lending a hand again.
Camilleri was well aware of the risks working at a fireworks factory entailed as he had survived a similar blast in the past.
In February 2012, he was among two men injured when a similar explosion blew ceilings and walls off the Kirkop factory as they prepared fireworks in an adjacent room. The men noticed something was wrong and ran away just in time, escaping serious injury.
His body was only released for burial last month just 10 days after Times of Malta published a story quoting relatives expressing their dismay that their loved one had not yet been given the final send-off he deserved.
The victim’s nephew, Larner Polidano, had described how the family had been left "completely in the dark".
“All we were told is that the magisterial inquiry has not yet been concluded. But it’s been far too long. We are still grieving his loss and now we’re going to go through it again when his body is released and when we are able to give him the final send-off he deserves,” he had said.
A judge last week denied a request for a warrant of prohibitory injunction following a request of a neighbouring farmer who claimed that the “illegal” and “shoddy” works undertaken to rebuild the partly-demolished factory were seriously prejudicing his family’s life and property.