The president of Malta’s architectural chamber has blamed Malta’s slow criminal justice system for the chamber’s failure to act against members responsible for construction site deaths.

Chamber of Architects and Civil Engineers (KTP) president Andre Pizzuto said long-drawn-out court cases and a lack of cooperation meant the KTP’s ability to act was limited.  

“We can’t have court cases that take years,” he said, adding that all decisions to revoke or suspend architects’ licenses were challenged in the Court of Appeal. 

A study published on Saturday found that not a single architect or civil engineer has had their license revoked over the past 23 years in relation to construction deaths. The report also noted that the vast majority of investigations and court cases related to such deaths remain pending.

“This highlights the need for offices like the attorney general to cooperate with us... we’re waiting on her,” Pizzuto said, referring to Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg.

He cited the case of Miriam Pace, saying that the KTP had been waiting to proceed with disciplinary hearings since February 2021. 

Pace was buried under the rubble of her family home in Ħamrun in 2020 after it collapsed due to building works next door.  Two architects responsible for Pace’s death, Roderick Camilleri, 38 and Anthony Mangion, 74, were handed suspended sentences and ordered to do a combined 880 hours of community service by a court of appeal one year ago.

Both the attorney general and a magistrate had refused to provide the KTP with a copy of the magisterial inquiry into Pace’s death while proceedings were underway.

Those proceedings ended last July and the KTP began its own disciplinary proceedings against the two in September after finally receiving a copy of the inquiry, Pizzuto said.

However, despite a judge authorising the criminal case file to be released for use in the proceedings in March, the court registrar has so far failed to make a copy available and has ignored repeated reminders, Pizzuto told Times of Malta.  

Despite the delays, the KTP president stressed that it was important the chamber only act based on evidence. 

“We need to act with impartiality and fairness. It is not appropriate to take rushed decisions simply to quell public opinion, and not be led by the evidence. If we did the former, our decisions would be overturned on appeal,” he said. 

There are two ways in which an architect can lose a warrant: either following a decree by the Criminal Court or after a decision made by the council of the KTP, in line with the Periti Act.

In both cases, the execution is carried out by the warranting board.

Licensing of contractors and funding 

Pizzuto hopes the promised licensing of contractors will provide some relief and improve construction site safety, noting that not all construction site fatalities could be attributed to architects and civil engineers.  

In February, Pizzuto and one of his predecessors told Times of Malta that architects were being forced to carry responsibility for contractors’ malpractices because the latter are unregulated.

At the time, Christopher Mintoff, the former head of the KTP, said architects had been rendered into a cheap insurance policy that acts as a smokescreen to protect unlicensed contractors. 

In March, following repeated calls to the government to introduce the measure, Planning Minister Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi announced that applications for licenses would open at the start of June.  

According to Pizzuto, so far, however, requests from the chamber to the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) to review the scheme’s final documentation had not been answered. 

“They haven’t consulted with us properly on the licensing... we've met with them on a few occasions but each time they talk about concepts and never share with us the text.  

“To date we are still not aware of the final version of the text after the public consultation period was closed so we can provide our input,” Pizzuto said. 

“Usually when we give feedback they ignore us anyway,” he said.  

Pizzuto also drew attention to a lack of funding for the chamber, which he said was entirely self-financed by the organisation. 

With defending appeals against its decisions costing the chamber upwards of €7,000, invoking a suspension or revocation of a license was in danger of becoming prohibitively expensive, he said.  

Besides the financial cost, some people had also resorted to aggressive tactics, including threats to put garnishees on his personal bank accounts, he explained. 

“They get personal,” Pizzuto said.