Black summer spectacle

The Simshar disaster must have sold lots of newsprint, upping summer sales from their customary low ebb. We have read and watched in morbid curiosity or remote sympathy. Nearly all of us have been useless as far as the victims are concerned and the surge of information will be pointless unless the facts are reliably established and lessons learned. And as soon as possible. The most sensible demand made in the wake of the Simshar was that by the Marsaxlokk Fishermen Cooperative's Raymond Bugeja: a demand for a full inquiry.

Only days before, the boat of some friends of mine was hit by gunfire as they sailed past the Pembroke firing range. They came within centimetres of providing us with another summer tragedy. Mistress Elusive could have sailed into St Paul's Bay with Helen Muscat's head all over her yacht's cabin.

The incident is being investigated at various levels but when will we all find out what happened, what failed and what, if anything, will be done to prevent the next near miss or tragedy?

How come we have not had the minister responsible bouncing on the rebound to show us that matters have been taken in hand at once to make sure that anything of the sort has been made impossible. He or she would have been at Miss Muscat's funeral had she been killed just as we have had the top brass visiting the sole Simshar survivor in hospital.

At the last crane disaster (Or was it the one before that?) we were informed that such occurrences are not logged and studied by experts in the field and no dedicated archive exists, much less a monitoring of this activity in such a way that the public can rely on someone somewhere ensuring that accidents are reduced to the absolute minimum. Crane accidents have become so frequent that no minister bothers to show up.

It is no comfort to anyone that inquiring magistrates seem up to their eyeballs in inquests. Magistrate Giovanni Grixti was so exasperated that he felt the need to break the traditional silence of his colleagues to explain that it is unfair to him that the bald statistics make him out to be among the laggards.

Perhaps prodding the magistrates by publishing statistics is not the best way to get results.

In many cases an accident provokes multiple inquiries having various targets. Magistrates determine whether anybody should be called to answer for any criminal liability. Almost every other public body could be engaged in its own internal inquiry for internal disciplinary purposes and to determine the government's liability. Meanwhile, the victims have to fend for themselves with regard to recovering compensation.

Can it all be trimmed down? What if we had one-stop-shops for inquiries at least in some sectors? Where technical expertise will be the skill interpreting the available evidence all judicial or quasi judicial bodies must wait for the experts.

Why not have a team of experts permanently appointed to oversee the construction industry or the maritime sector? They will require statutory independence and legal expertise if their findings are to be relied upon for all purposes. Why should witnesses be called to give evidence several times to different teams looking into the same facts? Why should parties seeking civil redress have to follow several inquiries and await their outcome?

Is it altogether impossible to establish appropriate fora of inquiry, which will be able to prepare a brief such that both the inquiring magistrate and any judge called upon to make an award for damages can rely on the evidence gathered and the methods used to do so? Would this take some of the workload off the magistracy allowing it to pick up speed in those cases no other body of persons can delve into?

When a judicial system fails, everything fails. Just because we have acclimatised to it does not make it any less of a system failure. On the other hand, an efficient justice system provides benefits not only in the cases it treats but also in many others it prevents. Knowing that any accident will bring home responsibility fast and furious will keep many of us on our toes.

We may become less fatalistic about the construction cowboys who wreck our homes or take awesome risks with our lives and properties. They may become more civilised.

If the Simshar had an operational link to the Vessel Monitoring System, why did it take so long to find the victims? What failed? Can we rely on such systems or are they all paper tigers? Many more people than just the incident victims need to know and fast. When will it be safe to sail past Pembroke? When will it be truly safe to have someone erect a crane next to one's home? When will the system work?

Dr Vassallo is former chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.

hcvassallo@kemmunet.net.mt