Only half the quarries on the island have conducted an adequate risk assessment of the dangers to workers despite being legally obliged to, a report by the Occupational Health and Safety Authority shows.
The OHSA annual report, which was tabled in Parliament, indicates that soft stone quarries were not compliant with several health and safety requirements and were now facing enforcement proceedings following surprise inspections last year.
According to the report, although all of the 16 quarries operating last year claimed to have provided the necessary safety training for workers, no documented evidence of this training existed to back up their claims.
Only one of the inspected quarries kept an accident record book, meaning it was impossible for authorities to have any idea how many accidents had occurred.
Worse still, the health and safety watchdog also cast doubts on the extent of maintenance being carried out on the dangerous heavy machinery used at the sites.
The report said that while nearly 90 per cent of the operators claimed to conduct regular maintenance on their mechanical equipment, only a third could back this up with certificates or any other form of documentation.
Similarly, it said that although 11 quarry operators claimed to have conducted regular maintenance on their electrical plants, only one quarry owner could back this up with documents.
But is quarrying really that dangerous? According to the EU’s latest labour force survey, quarrying led to the highest number of complaints of work-related health problems for men in 2013.
In 2007, a 39-year-old truck driver was crushed to death while working at a quarry in Marsascala. He had been extracting sand from a mechanical crusher truck and throwing it onto a pile of sand at the bottom of the quarry when his truck overturned, trapping him underneath it. Although the quarry operators were not found to have been at fault in this case, accidents resulting in injury are not unheard of. Back in 2015, a quarry worker was seriously injured when part of the site he was working in collapsed.
Still, despite the apparent dangers of the industry, the OHSA said that just three quarries had a sufficient number of workers who were familiar with first aid. Just six quarries had a space set up to provide workers with medical attention in case of an accident.
Inspectors even found that two active quarrying sites posed a risk of workers falling from perilous heights. In these cases, immediate orders for preventative measures to be taken were issued.