Act now... consultation can wait

Consultation is something that should be encouraged. However, when choosing between hearing what people, including stakeholders, have to say and saving human life there is no doubt the second must take precedence. That is the choice the Justice and Home Affairs Minister was faced with when presented with the report of the board of inquiry into fireworks factory tragedies. Regrettably, he made the wrong choice.

The conclusions by the Vella inquiry cannot be clearer. The inquiry board warns of at least one large-scale fireworks accident in the New Year or in 2013 unless regulations are changed and certain chemical mixtures are banned.

Yet, the minister prefers to first open the findings for public consultation and then hold a stakeholder conference to establish which measures to adopt.

This last point is indeed rich. What was the whole point of ordering an inquiry and asking the experts sitting on it to come up with suggestions? Why are stakeholders, for which read fireworks manufacturers and their very influential lobby, being given the final word, especially when it is obvious from the report that much of what has happened has been their doing and nobody else’s?

The minister’s decision means that life and limb continue to be at risk in order not to irk fireworks manufacturers.

The report released on Wednesday bears the date of November 11, meaning the minister had adequate time to think about it and make the necessary consultations. But perhaps he consulted the wrong people!

That something was wrong – awfully wrong – in the industry was evident. Admittedly, accidents just happen but the death toll here is indicative of bad practices and lack of knowledge, not to say incompetence, as the inquiry report so manifestly shows. There were 69 accidents between 1981 and last year, which claimed 50 lives and left 36 people injured. A very morbid point emerges from the report, further stressing the need for urgent action. If the accident prevalence rate in the UK were to be applied to Malta, one would expect an accident every 250 years. Yet, the number of accidents here over the past 30 years works out at an average of 2.3 a year.

These statistics are reason enough to stress the need for urgent action; what causes the tragedies further underlines this need in thick red ink: “Maltese pyrotechnicians are fantastic at what they do but many lack the scientific knowledge necessary when dealing with volatile chemical compositions.” The inquiry board could hardly have been more candid.

In an editorial titled Till The Next Tragedy, days after the explosion in Gozo last year, The Times wrote thus: “It would be a shame if last week’s death toll does not prove to be the watershed, the belated line in the sand drawn by all of us to do what we can to limit the chances as much as possible – eliminating danger is impossible in any pursuit, even sitting comfortably on a chair – of this type of tragedy happening again.”

That appeal can only be repeated more forcefully now that experts have pronounced themselves and made solid suggestions.

Rather than hold consultation meetings and conferences, the powers that be should immediately declare a moratorium on the manufacture of fireworks and implement the recommendations made by the Vella inquiry without any loss of time. If urgent action is taken, fireworks may still feature at the next festa season, even if on a smaller scale than usual.

Mr Minister: Just do it.