Updated 8.50pm - Adds OHSA clarification

The Occupational Health and Safety Authority has urged anyone seeing workers working in a dangerous environment to make contact with it immediately rather than rush to the social media.

For some people, the authority claimed, it was more important to create a sensation than to avoid tragedies.

The authority can be contacted, anonymously, on any day of the week on 2124 7677. It promised to take immediate action on any reports it received.

The OHSA statement was issued after Times of Malta on Saturday and yesterday published pictures of workers ignoring safety precautions on a construction site (see above).

The reader who sent them said he had phoned the authority but nothing appeared to have been done.

The OHSA did not mention the case in its statement, and its CEO Mark Gauci subsequently told Times of Malta that the reader in question had never contacted the authority, contrary to what they had claimed. 

OHSA officials were alerted to the danger on Sunday and took immediate action, Dr Gauci said. He urged readers to use the emergency number 99496786 when reporting illegalities out of office hours. 

The authority said it could not be present at all times, but inspectors made some 2,400 inspections at places of work between January and August this year. Most led to orders for remedial action. Almost half the inspections were on construction sites.  

A total of 243 administrative penalties were issued, for a total of €106,400.