The Occupational Health and Safety Authority issued 555 administrative fines and initiated 176 criminal proceedings in 2017 – and had seen injuries and fatalities decrease yet again.

The OHSA chairperson and government MP Emanuel Mallia said in Parliament that the year-on-year decrease in workplace injuries and fatalities demonstrated that the OHSA’s regulatory and educational functions were having the desired effect.

However, Dr Mallia expressed the need for more staff, including technical experts, legal personnel, and procurement staff. Furthermore, foreign workers were at greater risk than Maltese workers, lacking knowledge of their rights and duties as well as facing communication problems, and a campaign was being put together in order to address these specific issues.

The authority plans to issue further guidelines, including on the assembly and use of tower cranes, by the end of 2018.

Although the tabled annual report indicated a forecast deficit of €41,956 due to an increase in personal emoluments of €287,860, it added that this deficit would become an overall surplus when the 2017 surplus of €158,063 was carried forward.

Opening for the Opposition, MP Claudette Buttigieg questioned the fact that he was opening a debate on the estimates of an authority of which he himself was chair. This compromised the level of scrutiny over the authority’s operations, she said.

Ms Buttigieg commended the hard work carried out by the authority’s 35 employees “on a shoestring budget,” but called into question its financial priorities.

Dr Mallia and the two persons of trust to which he was entitled - a personal secretary and a messenger - cost the authority €53,000 a year, which, together with the €22,360 divided between the Board’s members, represented a tenth of the authority’s overall expenditure on personal emoluments.

Expressing discomfort at having to pose these questions following the intervention of the OHSA chairman himself, she questioned the added value that the top brass’s financial packages brought to such a small authority, and argued that the €75,000 that Dr Mallia, his personal staff, and the OHSA Board cost could have been used to hire four new inspectors who were “desperately needed”.

Instead, recruitment was inexplicably on hold, and the authority had allocated only €1,000 to staff training, she said.