MDA calls for changes in Health and Safety law

The Malta Developers Association wishes to register its disappointment at the way company directors are 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 co-operated on several occasions with the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) 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.
In this regard, for example, if the owner of a development is found guilty of any infringement, when the owner is a company, the fine for this infringement is multiplied by the number of company directors who are all considered to have committed the infringement individually.
In a case currently before the Courts, even a non-executive company director has been accused of causing a worker’s death, irrespective of whether he personally had any connection with the incident that led to this death. The MDA does not agree with these types of accusations in our Courts of people who are obviously innocent.
The MDA therefore appeals to the Government to amend the law so that where it is obvious that a company director had nothing to do with any infringement of the law on health and safety at work, that person should not be held criminally responsible for this.

MDA calls for changes in Health and Safety law

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