The revelations drip feeding from the public inquiry into Jean Paul Sofia’s death continue to paint a disconcerting mosaic of inefficient authorities, unclear procedures and a leaky legal framework. From the depositions of various authority heads, past and present, it becomes increasingly clearer that the system regulating construction is wantonly designed to fail.

An academic tasked with a project to compile the various laws in the sector and identify its inconsistencies recently told the inquiry that the Building and Construction Authority has no oversight over freestanding buildings such as the one that killed Sofia in December.

The testimony shed further light on the situation in the sector as a whole.

The Planning Authority was supposed to enforce the regulations on freestanding buildings but a ministerial order places the responsibility on the Building Regulations Office. Yet, the laws do not reflect this, so the BRO – and, subsequently, the BCA - have no jurisdiction to enforce.

The witness also declared that the law establishing the Building and Construction Authority was a “declaration of principle” and that, unless subsidiary legislation is introduced, it cannot enforce. This confirms the perplexities shown by civil society in 2021 while the draft law was being debated in parliamentary committees: that the authority cannot function without a strong legal framework.

The government’s decision to establish an authority before establishing the legal frameworks resulted in further loss of lives. In fact, regulations on working hours, excavation, site cleanliness and transportation of materials were only introduced through subsidiary legislation and legal notices.

This delay also means that the much-vaunted contractors’ registry will not be operational before 2025 and there is no date set for the enactment of building codes into law. All this naturally favours the developers’ lobby, who have successfully blocked the first launch of the contractors’ registry by taking over its administration from the government; the ombudsman had found that this exercise in “self-regulation” went against the spirit of the law.

The BCA has no power of enforcement because there is no regulation allowing it to do so; a clear failure of the law itself. The author of this is lawyer and architect Robert Musumeci who, besides being a government consultant in matters of planning, construction and even lands, is also among the favourite architects of the development lobby.

This is a clear case of conflict of interest which has been allowed to fester. Musumeci was also responsible for the “reform” of July 2019, which introduced site technical officers. The reform was described as “half baked” at the time and has been referred to as “stupid” in front of the Sofia inquiry; it did nothing to prevent the deaths of Miriam Pace and numerous construction workers. What the law did in practical terms was to create another layer of responsibility, that of the STO, which has failed spectacularly because there’s nobody to enforce.

Here too, the only ones to benefit from these loophole-ridden regulations are the developers; they were penned by an architect whose portfolio includes many of those he should be regulating.

It is becoming even clearer why the government worked hard to deny Sofia’s family a public inquiry.

The slogan that “the system is rotten” is backed up by a series of testimonies, often contradictory, which, however, concur on the fact that the system is really working to favour business interests.

There’s also a very vile coda to this: victims of construction tragedies and accidents often find obstacles from the authorities in their search for justice and the Sofia case is no different.

For it is one thing to favour the flow of money but preserving the status quo while workers die is nothing short of criminal.