‘300% no danger’, until the foundations started collapsing

“Not 100%, but 300% there is no danger,” developer Anton Camilleri, known as tal–Franċiż, told journalists after residents heard a loud noise as the foundations beneath Camilleri’s huge development in Naxxar started to collapse.

Families residing in the area had to be evacuated.  Yet Minister Jonathan Attard turned up and tried to bolster the developer’s own false reassurances.  Those evacuations, Minister Jonathan Attard insisted, had only taken place as a precautionary measure.

He tried to minimise the seriousness and precariousness of the situation in a clear effort to shield the developer from the wrath of the area’s residents and those who had purchased one of the 64 apartments in that massive development.

Why on earth would a Labour minister seek to defend the developer whose reckless construction methods were clearly jeopardising the lives of residents and workers at the site? Hasn’t Labour learnt anything from the preventable deaths of Miriam Pace and Jean Paul Sofia? Were the lives of Adrian Muscat and Bari Balla lost in vain?

Anton Camilleri’s claim that there was “absolutely no danger” at his Naxxar construction site was very far from the truth.  And Jonathan Attard’s intervention in defence of the developer was not only misguided but also entirely inappropriate.

That site was not only dangerous but “very precarious at various levels”, “clearly unstable”, “very dangerous” and “liable to fail without warning”.  Those were the conclusions of an expert report drawn up by structural engineer Alex Torpiano.  His report paints a shocking picture of the shoddiness and disregard for basic safety at the Naxxar site.

He noted that the outward pressure of the very large volume of construction material against the outer wall was held only by the “frictional interface of the toothing between the fins and outer walls”.

That “toothing” consisted of generally only one leaf deep, with the mortar not likely to have provided any significant bond at the joints.  The report warned that the site was far from being safe.  “Failure could progress rapidly, especially with ingress of water, and the stones above the area of collapse could fall without warning”.

“Since the whole situation is so fragile, remedial interventions have to induce minimal vibrations since these could trigger incipient collapses,” the report warned.  It also recommended that workers should not be underneath or in the vicinity of the precarious area, and any work on the site should be carried out remotely.

Torpiano pointed out that the remedial works would only stabilise the damage to the development, but that these would “not necessarily enhance the load-bearing capacity of the substructure”.

Minister Jonathan Attard must have known of the longstanding problems and complaints regarding Camilleri’s development in Naxxar. The BCA had fined him at least seven times over infractions of the regulations at that construction site. Residents had been warning authorities and sounding the alarm over safety risks for years.

Residents had also experienced damage to their own properties.  They had reported cracked tiles, falling soffits, and structural damage to their properties adjacent to the construction site.

One resident had even filed a police report after noticing construction workers using dangerous machinery near the foundations of his property.  His report was ignored.  Another resident described the site as “a mess” lasting three whole years.

If the BCA knew about these multiple infringements at the site, why did it wait until the foundations started to collapse before commissioning a report by a structural engineer?  Why did the BCA overlook these multiple problems and complaints on the site? And why did Attard stick his neck out to defend the developer?

What is certain is that the developer has been given special treatment by Robert Abela and his Labour government for years. The prime minister kickstarted a review of the North Harbour local plan, after having repeatedly told the nation that this was cast in stone and could not be changed, to favour Camilleri’s planned massive development at Villa Rosa.

When reporters asked whether Abela had met Camilleri to discuss the local plan changes before they became public, the Office of the Prime Minister dodged the question, saying only: “Government and its authorities and entities hold regular meetings with local and foreign investors, as is their duty to do.”

The key question is, why was Camilleri being treated with kid gloves by our Labour government on the eve of elections? Why on earth would Labour keep protecting somebody who’s been so ruthlessly reckless? And Minister Attard had the brass neck to tell the nation that “the authorities prioritise public safety”.

“There is absolutely no danger,” Camilleri insisted. “Not 100%, but 300%, there is no danger”.

But instantly, he had second thoughts.  “If it collapses, it will simply collapse into the hole of the site itself,” he added.  “This is my site… there are no residents living in the units as they are still under construction, and if anything happens, I will bear the consequences”.

There may be no residents, but there certainly are plenty of workers.  Don’t their lives count?

Minister Attard’s duty is to protect the residents and the workers.  It’s certainly not his role to defend rogue developers.

Now he’s belatedly realised how bad the optics are of a Labour minister leaping to the aid of a mega developer.  Now he’s changed the narrative, saying:  “There is no room for shortcuts or compromises when it comes to health and safety… As a government, we will continue sending a clear and unequivocal message to the construction sector”.

The only message Labour is sending to the construction sector and the cowboys operating within it is that Labour will always be on their side, no matter how precarious their developments, no matter how fragile their constructions, no matter how many lives they put in danger, no matter how many people are buried alive under the rubble of their collapsed flimsy constructions.