The Malta Developers Association expressed disappointment at the way company directors were being charged in court in connection with health and safety incidents at the workplace.

"While the MDA believes that the law on health and safety is a good one and it has cooperated on several occasions with the Occupational Health and Safety Authority to ensure that its members observe the law scrupulously, the MDA feels that there is a lacuna in this law when the owner of a project is a company."

It noted that if the owner of a development was found guilty of any infringement, when the owner was a company, the fine was multiplied by the number of company directors who were all considered to have committed the infringement individually.

The MDA said that in a case currently before the courts, even a non-executive company director was accused of causing a worker’s death, irrespective of whether he personally had any connection with the incident that led to this death.

It appealed to the government to amend the law so that where it was obvious that a company director had nothing to do with any infringement of the law on health and safety at work, that person would not be held criminally responsible.