Authorities that are meant to oversee occupational health and safety and the safeguarding of people on construction sites have remained tightlipped about whether they will investigate fallen glass from a high-rise building.
On Monday, eyewitnesses reported that sheets of glass had fallen from the construction site at Mercury Towers in Paceville, shattering on the street down below.
Although nobody was injured, the incident caused mayhem in traffic with the glass falling in a particularly busy junction at around 4 pm in Gort Street.
Eyewitnesses said that the glass fell from roughly 15 storeys up on the construction site, with the glass rebounding onto the fourth-floor balcony of the building opposite.
Mercury Towers has said that the incident occurred when a contractor working on the inside of the building hit the already-installed windows and the glass shattered – as it is designed to do when hit with some force.
'In line with international safety standards'
This, they said, is in line with international safety standards and that the tempered glass used is less likely to pose a threat when broken.
Times of Malta contacted the Occupational Health & Safety Authority, asking whether the area has been cordoned off to prevent the situation from happening again, whether the work should have been carried out in Monday’s windy conditions and what precautions should have been taken to avoid the incident.
The authority simply answered that it “does not share information about its investigations”.
The Building and Construction Authority did not reply to questions sent on Friday.
It was asked whether it had launched an investigation into the incident and what mitigation measures, if any, it plans to impose to prevent the incident from happening again.
The Mercury Towers project, which is spearheaded by Gozitan developer Joseph Portelli, on Thursday was granted planning permission to add an additional storey to the planned hotel that is set to rise next to the already-built tower.
OHSA, BCA practices under scrutiny
The operational practices of both the OHSA and the BCA have come under closer scrutiny as they are examined as part of the public inquiry into the construction site death of Jean Paul Sofia.
OHSA chairman David Xuereb, who also sits on the BCA board, testified that he wanted rogue contractors to be "named and shamed".
BCA officials who testified in the public inquiry said that the agency, which was set up two years ago following the death of Miriam Pace in a separate construction site collapse, was in the dark about the Corradino project because it did not impact third parties and therefore outside of their remit.
Commencement notices for construction projects are filed with the Planning Authority and there is no centralised system for all stakeholders to access. It is down to a project’s architect to alert the BCA if third parties could be impacted by works.
Testimony during that sitting also shed light on the lack of clarity concerning regulatory roles within the construction sector.
In a public inquiry hearing last week, outgoing OHSA boss Mark Gauci said that site inspections would not have flagged issues at the Corradino site because OHSA inspectors are not qualified to assess construction standards.
He said that OHSA personnel had no duty to check on sites where they do not see ongoing work and argued that even if they had visited the Corradino site, there was nothing they could have done to prevent the tragedy.