Demolition sites

Quite recently, the Environment Ministry (October 3) published the long-awaited Construction Site Management Regulations which will come into force next November 1; but there is nearly nothing to safeguard victimised adjacent neighbours who might suffer death, injuries or damages to their dear ones or to their homes and possessions.

Ironically, while the Environment Minister advises harmed victims of demolition/reconstruction sites to go to court, at unaffordable expense, thereby increasing the number of court cases, another minister works hard to reduce the work-load at the law courts.

In compiling these belated regulations, the Environment Minister should have taken a leaf from a recent Court of Appeal judgment (September 29) where the learned judge found for the victimised neighbour and blamed the offending developer by handing down a suspended jail term and ordering him to repair the damages caused within six months; I mean exactly the part that ordered the guilty developer to repair the damages caused, if the minister sincerely and really meant to afford them the highest degree of protection (April 30).

Knowing that nowadays there is more redevelopment than development - that is, there is more harmful demolition that contributes appreciably to the general environmental and neighbourhood damage, not to say death and injuries - the minister took great care of broken pavements (bank guarantee) rather than hard-done-by neighbours.

Unlike the Environment Minister, I believe in "what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander" and persons like me - and there are many - are bound to suffer immeasurably mentally and materially for want of a doubtful helping hand from the responsible minister.

Minister Pullicino's striking revolving earth (directionally awry) fountain in Sliema may have hit the headlines and contractors may claim that they are the mainstay of the economy - perhaps also of the large political parties - but a democratic government normally cries out for the fullest protection of innocent victims, not only for broken pavements.

Our politicians do not seem to realise that you cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

One trusts that this is not a harbinger of things to come.