[WATCH] Graffitti lead demonstration in Ħamrun against ‘developers’ greed’

Graffitti have called for true change in Malta's construction industry, as they led a protest against excessive development on Saturday in the wake of the death Miriam Pace.

Pace, 54, and wife and mother of two, was killed when her home on Monday collapsed, burying her under the rubble. The cause of the collapse had been tied to excavation which had been underway in a large plot directly adjacent to her house.

The protest today started from near St Thomas More College in Sta Venera, with demonstrators proceeding to the site of Pace's collapsed home.

Graffitti activist Andre Callus called out the persons behind the government construction laws reform which was carried out last year in the light of four other building collapses which had taken place.

He said the construction lobby, led by Malta Developers Association boss Sandro Chetcuti, had prevented the real reforms which could have truly reformed the sector.

"The reforms worked only for the interest of developers. You are hypocrites and killers," Callus said.

He said that the NGO was requesting three levels of reforms: legal change to safeguard the interest of the people, not of developers; enforcement with enough resources provided for this to truly be effective; and a system to curb the influence of developers on politicians.

'You should be ashamed of yourselves'

Speaking during the protest, 24-year-old Anthea Brincat, whose Gwardamanġa apartment she lived in with her family suffered extensive damage last June following the collapse of a wall due to construction next door, said developers should be ashamed of themselves.

An emotional Brincat said the physical and mental effects of the trauma of losing a home carried on long after the incident itself.

"The developer who led to our home collapsing is still on the contractors' register, because he is Sandro Chetcuti's friend," she said.

"Do us a favour, Sandro, and if there is another accident, do not come on site," she said, "You've disgusted us."

She said architect and government consultant Robert Musumeci, who had been involved in drafting the legal reforms in 2019, had also failed the people. 

No amount of compensation could fix things for those who lost their homes, or in the latest case, their wife and mother, she said. "Your conscience cannot be cleaned... blood is on your hands."

Brincat thanked the Housing Authority and the community, who she said had been the only ones to provide her family with help after they lost their home.

Paul Vella, whose mother lost her life 20 years ago due to another building collapse, said that the recent laws reform has not provided any result.

"The laws are not there to protect us, but to safeguard those who have money - contractors, speculators, architects..." he said.

Caroline Micallef, whose Gwardamanġa Hill apartment block collapsed in April 2019, said careless developers had almost killed them.

"Sandro Chetcuti said it was an unfortunate accident. Will you say it was an unfortunate accident if they bring down your own home?" she said.

"We are alive by a miracle, because we managed to leave with a few minutes to spare," she said, lamenting that not inquiry had taken place to find the cause of the collapse.

Micallef said she and been through a trauma, and that there should be a system in place to protect people who suffer such losses of their home due to development. "The laws protect the contractors and developers, not the common man," she said.

'How do Sandro Chetcuti and Robert Musumeci sleep at night?'

Graffitti activist Wayne Flask asked how Chetcuti and Musumeci could sleep at night.

Musumeci, Flask said, had written the legal notice reforming construction laws which "wasn't even good to use [as toilet paper]."

"How does Chetcuti, the virgin who doesn't want construction cowboys, sleep," he asked.

The time now was not for continuity, Flask said, but for serious and decent reform by those who had the country not their pockets at heart.

Moviment Graffitti said the construction lobby was continuously interfering in reforms in the sector and insisted that its profits, not decency, were the most important value.

The NGO said that the lack of enforcement in the sector, inadequate laws, a complete laissez-faire attitude in planning, lack of safety in construction sites, and the “arrogant bullying attitude of the development lobby” was the result of years and years of donations and pressure on the world of politics.

“This latest fatality is the direct result of this situation. Together with this, the legal notice drafted by Robert Musumeci after a spate of similar incidents last summer is the product of incompetence and servility towards the construction lobby. As we have repeated many times, accidents like this were going to continue because this ‘reform’ did not tackle, in any manner, the structural problems within the system,” Graffitti said.