Following the recent submission of an application to rebuild the Fontana Brothers Fireworks Factory at Għarb after its destruction in an explosion that killed four people last year, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has said he would be holding a meeting with ministers to ensure there was a “coherent policy and legislation on fireworks factories” and “that a report presented to the Government last year was implemented”.

Inexplicably, fireworks did not feature in the Labour Party’s comprehensive “road map” of over 800 policy proposals despite the vocal public debate on the issue in the run-up to the election. When ministers meet to discuss matters, therefore, it may be salutary for them to be reminded of the background to this application and the recent tragic history of fireworks in this country.

The explosion that demolished the Għarb fireworks factory last November followed another just two years earlier, bringing the total number of deaths in two factories near that tiny village to 10.

The factories were in relatively open countryside. It would be horrific to contemplate what would have been the result had a similar explosion occurred in some of the other factories (there are more than 40) adjacent to crowded towns and villages in Malta and Gozo or if people had been walking in the area at the time of the Għarb explosion.

The board of inquiry set up after the first Għarb tragedy in 2010 reported to the Government in December 2011. The experts predicted that “Malta would experience at least one large-scale fatal fireworks accident in 2012 or 2013” unless regulations were urgently amended and certain mixtures banned – a prediction that tragically came to pass at the Fontana Brothers Factory in 2012. As one board member said: “We need to implement the recommendations immediately as we are literally playing with fire.”

Fifteen months after the expert commission submitted its findings, Malta is still no further forward. Political apathy in the face of such dire forecasts of what might (and did) happen is unacceptable.

Now that the transfer of government has occurred, what should happen?

First, the Prime Minister must remind his ministers – and specifically his Minister for Home Affairs and National Security – that they have a paramount duty of care to society, which successive governments have failed to exercise in this area. The roll-call of death and high incidence of accidents from fireworks are unacceptable in a civilised society.

Secondly, a moratorium on the manufacture of fireworks should be imposed until the full implementation of the board of inquiry’s report.

Simultaneously, the Government should take immediate steps to implement the board’s recommendations. It is no good asking experts in such a highly-technical field as explosives to make recommendations if inexpert ministers then seek to second-guess them for narrow political reasons.

Fourth, the application of the regulations on the ground directly reflecting the board’s recommendations must be rigorously enforced, backed up by sufficient fireworks inspectors, strict licensing of factories in conformity with international standards, proper control of pyrotechnics’ transportation and a regime that ensures the training and expertise of ‘gifted amateurs’ making fireworks is of a truly professional calibre.

The new Government has an opportunity to demonstrate that the prevarication that has marked this life-or-death issue is now past. The need for action to spare Maltese and Gozitan lives from future carnage has come.

No more fireworks factories should be built and those that survive should be made fully safe.