Last year witnessed the tragic death of seven people in fireworks factory explosions. In virtually each year in recent memory pyrotechnics enthusiasts have been killed or maimed, families torn apart by the loss of husbands or sons, near-by inhabitants endangered and exposed to potentially fatal risk. All this in the name of a popular so-called hobby and to foster the cause of competing village festas.

Fireworks come from a long Maltese tradition. The expertise of local manufacturers is well recognised even internationally. The spectacular shows that light up Malta's summer nights enhance the holiday season and attract tourists in their thousands.

But the question must be asked - and, indeed, the Church Environment Commission has starkly asked it - whether the human cost of fireworks is too high. One should also add that the environmental cost, in terms of noise pollution and the inconvenience to inhabitants living close to fireworks displays, must also be weighed in the equation. While there may not be a realistic case for banning the manufacture of fireworks, there are certainly the strongest grounds for stringently controlling the way they are made and their use - on overriding safety, as well as for quality of life reasons.

The Pyrotechnics Commission, that was set up to investigate the safety of fireworks factories and related matters, has recently delivered its report. It makes a number of sensible recommendations of both a technical and practical nature.

It calls, inter alia, for a tightening of the criteria and requirements on which licensing of factories is granted; the establishment of a nominated safety officer at all factories; mandatory health and safety educational courses for all pyrotechnics enthusiasts; the better layout and construction of factories; the obligation on factories to take out third party insurance cover; and the introduction of stiffer penalties under the Explosives Ordinance Act. Moreover, a permanent unit should be established to carry out regular inspections of factories with the power to close down those that do not conform to the necessary safety standards.

What is perhaps surprising about the Pyrotechnic Commission's report is why what it has just recommended had not already been put in place. Common sense and good work practices in an area as hazardous as the manufacture of pyrotechnics - one might have thought - should have seen to that. But in Malta nothing, it appears, is quite so straightforward. Perhaps this is exemplified best of all by the apparent implications of the Pyrotechnic Commission's recommendation - based, it has to be said, on a report prepared in 2005 by another group of experts, but never implemented nor even published - that those factories operating in breach of the safety buffer distance of 183 metres prescribed by law should be closed down.

Yet, perversely, one factory that fell foul of this law at Gharghur - and was the theatre of the explosion last year which accounted for five deaths and significant damage to nearby houses - was "legitimised" by a Cabinet decision in 2001 to allow it to continue to function.

The Pyrotechnics Commission's report is vitally important. It needs to be acted upon urgently. Is there the political will to curtail a popular local hobby at this politically-sensitive juncture? Not to do so is, literally, to be playing with fire - perhaps even to dice with death - and to take unnecessary risks with the lives of those involved directly in making fireworks as well as those who stand to suffer collateral damage from such activities. Immediate action is called for.