'Winter Moods video shows failure to deal with asbestos' – Opposition MP

The fact that a Winter Moods music video was filmed in a derelict factory that was contaminated with asbestos shows that the health and safety authorities have failed to properly deal with an asbestos problem, Opposition MP Ryan Callus said.

“Research probes that asbestos are carcinogenic,” Callus said during a parliamentary debate on the financial estimates of the Occupational Health and Safety Authority. “How did the film crew manage to access that building? The fact that people could so easily access a yard littered with asbestos is a sign that the regulative system has failed to combat the asbestos threat.”

The music video, produced by MaltaFilm, was shot last summer at the condemned Mriehel factory that formerly housed Dowty O Rings; littered with asbestos panels, no warning signs were ever placed in the factory to warn trespassers of the dangers of contamination.

“The asbestos in that building was amosite, one of the most toxic forms of asbestos,” an industrial chemist had told MaltaToday. “The worst-case scenario for the two actors is that they will end up developing lung cancer in around 20 years’ time. Asbestos symptoms often take that long to develop.”

“There was no special reason why we chose this factory,” MaltaFilm executive producer Joshua Cassar-Gaspar had told MaltaToday. “It was an abandoned factory, easily accessible to all, with no apertures and completely exposed to the elements.

He questioned whether the OHSA carries out regular asbestos inspections and said that Malta should introduce strong regulations that properly address the presence of asbestos in public buildings, schools, and other places accessible to the public.

Callus also criticised the government for appointing a backbencher, Deo Debattista, as the OHSA’s chairman.

“I am not criticisng Debattista but the principle of appointing a government MP as the chair of a supposedly-independent authority,” he said. “How can the independence of authorities be truly safeguarded when they are being led by people who are integral to the government?"

In a response, backbencher and OHSA chairman Debattista said that the OHSA did not have the authority to intervene in the Mriehel factory case as it was no longer a workplace when the asbestos were revealed.

He pointed out that regulations on asbestos have been in place in 2003 and that the government has cleared asbestos out of the Gozo Hospital.