The other 'equals'

It did not take long for George Orwell's animals to discover that the real situation in their farm was that, although they were supposed to be all equal, the pigs had been clever enough to put themselves in a position in which they were more equal than the rest.

As in Orwell's Animal Farm, in Maltese society there are some animals who have rights and some who have more rights than others. Among those with the widest range of rights are those in the construction industry, be they greedy developers, insensitive architects or bullying contractors.

Anyone living close to a construction site - that is, three quarters of the Maltese population, except, perhaps, the very same developers, architects and contractors who usually live in villas surrounded by acres of land - will immediately understand what I am saying.

As an ordinary citizen you have no right to impede anyone from parking in front of your residence. But as an ordinary citizen you are likely to wake up one morning and find that notices have been arbitrarily placed all along your street, forbidding you to park in front of your own house, to allow for easy access to concrete mixers, cranes and trucks. And, if your car happens to be parked there from the night before, expect to be dragged out of bed at 7 o'clock in the morning and ordered to remove it.

Or you can return home one morning and find you are unable to unload your shopping and put your car in the garage because an enormous concrete mixer has been parked in front of it. The most you can expect, if you ask to have it removed, is a dismissive shrug from the workers - sometimes not even that if they do not understand what you are trying to tell them or they have not mastered enough of the Maltese language to be able to answer you.

Of course, the ubiquitous warden is always on these sites. His "rules of engagement" are clear-cut; he will only intervene to remonstrate with the driver that he cannot go through a road he normally uses. The reason? There are two heavy vehicles blocking the road. Nothing, calmly points out the warden, can be done. The driver just has to be patient, reverse and figure out for himself another way to get home.

Do not be surprised, however, if a week later that same warden, now metamorphosed into a lion, is on your doorstep busily fiddling with his tiny machine to book you for being parked in front of your own garage because all other parking places have been taken up by the vans belonging to the workers on the site.

The list of rights of the "pigs" in our society is never-ending: The right to obstruct pavements, the right to dump building material, the right to leave a trail of concrete on newly-surfaced roads, the right to wash concrete mixers in front of your residence and the right to erect enormous tower cranes whose arms span over the surrounding houses, carrying tons of building material over the roofs of the other "animals" with lesser rights who merely wish to get on with their lives without risks and annoyance.

These cranes, operated by a simple remote control, often in the hands of young lads, are a great hazard to residents. They swing with the wind close to electric cables and I wonder about their safety during a thunderstorm. It takes just one second of distraction or a small human error to provoke a tragedy, as recent experience has shown.

According to our Civil Code, the airspace above a property belongs, barring a few exceptions, exclusively to the owner of the property but our construction "pigs" infringe it with impunity because they are above our civil law.

I am not going to ask on whose side Mepa stands in this situation because it is obviously part and parcel of the construction industry and, therefore, inevitably part of the "pig" set-up in our society of "animals" more equal than others.

But I will ask what actions the health and safety authorities, the police and the local councils are taking to protect the other "animals" in this "farm".