We cannot expect miracles every time
We may get to a point where we see so many miracles happen on a daily basis that we tend to expect them every day. But we may overdo this and certainly miracles tend not to happen when we need them most. Take four cases. Some days ago in Sliema a woman went to her bedroom for an afternoon nap. Then the crane driver next door had a malfunction and bricks rained down on the poor woman’s roof and the roof collapsed. The woman however was safe.
A few days later in Gzira’s Rue d’Argens, people were in a shop and all of a sudden the crane next door had a malfunction and bricks rained down on the shop. Had there been someone in the changing room at the back of the shop, that person would surely have been killed. As it is, all persons inside the shop escaped with a huge shock but no injuries.
At the beginning of this week, also in Gzira, another crane hoisting plastic pipes had a malfunction and the pipes got loose and rained on a passing car, missing the windscreen by inches. You would have thought the unfortunate driver would get some commiseration, but none came. On the contrary the developer told him he had been almost killed three times in his life and was alive to tell the tale.
Lastly, on yesterday’s Times, an octogenarian from Paceville was complaining that the development next door had ruined her house, with cracks everywhere, rain seeping in, and the developer even counseling her not to sleep in the upstairs rooms, obviously because they risk collapsing.
Is it possible we are living in this kind of country? While the constructors ‘make hay while the sun shines’, she gets wet while the rain pours.
This government’s track record is definitely on the side of the construction lobby, with Planning Authority permits flying out like hot pastizzi and with cranes on every landscape and construction going on in every street. But in all this stoking up of the inevitable bubble the ordinary citizens are getting a raw deal. The rules governing good neighbourhood have gone out of the window, it would seem, and the experience of virtually everyone is that it is no use complaining once development takes place next to your house. There used to be a condition that enforces an insurance policy issued pending construction work. Whatever happened to this? And one does not really know who to complain to. The police direct you to the local council and the council to the police. Planning Authority directs you to the Building and Construction Unit and vice-versa. And meanwhile construction goes on and if you were in danger before, you remain in danger after.