The  plight of the four Guardamangia families whose homes came crashing down this week resonates in each and every one of us. We all feel desperately sorry for them and the trauma they feel at being forced out of their own home, wrenched from their neighbourhood, deprived of their possessions and of a lifetime’s memories and associations.

We also empathise with the dispossessed residents because we are aware that the same plight could very easily befall us. With the rampant construction taking place round the island and with the negligible regulation and enforcement undertaken, damage to property and loss of life and limb is a prospect Maltese citizens face every day.

With every  furrowing crack in the wall, with every vibration from the monstrous excavators in the adjacent plot, with every crane swinging overhead, we feel we are under threat.

What’s worse is that we know that if disaster befalls us, it will be horribly difficult to find recourse or obtain any sort of remedy within a reasonable period of time, meaning that we will be doubly victimised.

The underlying reason for these very real worries is the fact that all regulatory and enforcement systems relating to construction are weak and fragmented by design. There is absolutely no political will to enact, implement and fund legislation which is not cosmetic and vague.

With every crane swinging overhead, we feel we are under threat

Take the enforcement of building regulations, for example. Legislation and reporting lines are fragmented between different entities ranging from the police to the Building Regulations Office to the Planning Authority. Every authority fobs off reports and responsibility by shrugging them off onto to another authority.

The Building Regulations Office is hopelessly under-resourced. The police say that it’s not their remit. The Planning Authority is taken up rubber-stamping fuel station permits in ODZ land.

The long-awaited consolidated legislation covering all aspects of construction management and liability is nowhere in sight despite the assumption of more consultants than you can throw a stick at. If this sorely needed measure turns out to be yet another toothless quango stuffed with political appointees and covering up for the horrific messes of the construction industry, tragedies like the Gwardamangia one will become the norm.

The  interview with the president of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association Tony Zahra elicited many bitter comments. It’s not because of what he said – he mentioned the undeniable fact that cranes and pollution are driving high-spending tourists away – because that much is perfectly true. The hurt reaction of viewers was due to the  several reasons – one of which was that this state of affairs has long been foretold.

For some time now, commentators and even people within the hospitality industry have been stating the obvious – that a huge part of Malta looks like a soulless tip or a perpetual building site. And it’s not pretty. 

Someone will probably wave Malta’s ranking as the seventh “most Instagrammable” place in Europe, in response. However an in-depth look at the spots which are considered to be Instagrammable show that they are mostly the heritage sites and those (few) untouched spots of natural beauty.

So a curiously empty Blue Lagoon makes the grade, the construction horrors of Sliema do not. Marsaxlokk shows up – but the supposed Golden Mile stretching from St Julian’s isn’t anywhere in sight. Untouched Mdina takes pride of place. Gżira – groaning under the weight of mismatched buildings and scaffolding – doesn’t. And Gozo’s coastline is praised. It’s a pity that there is so little of Malta’s coast left that it doesn’t even feature.

So, even according to contemporary standards of what is snapworthy, scaffolded cities and construction debris just don’t cut it. They’re universally acknowledged to be ugly. And before somebody retorts about not being able to stop growth, I’d say that the kind of growth we are experiencing in Malta is not managed, is not sustainable and is not healthy. It does not encompass any form of study of carrying capacity or forecasting future trends – it’s just a gargantuan building buffet.

This is having a deleterious effect on the hospitality industry itself. As noted by Zahra, the drop in the amount being spent by tourists shows that the island is failing to attract higher-spenders – and things are getting steadily worse because of the cranes and pollution. The number of tourist arrivals for the whole of 2018 rose by 14.3 per cent to reach nearly 2.6 million. But each tourist is spending less: at €809, that is a decrease of 5.5 per cent when compared to 2017.

So we’re not only going overboard and destroying that which makes Malta unique and beautiful, but actually losing money in the process? How’s that for a lose-lose scenario?

More to the point, and the cause of much bitterness from residents, is the fact that they can’t just choose not to come here – like tourists do. Malta is their home and the frenzied pace of construction, the “anything goes” attitude towards enforcement and the general congestion is threatening their well-being and health.

That’s not something that an economic surplus can cure.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece