Kaizenlog

(Friday, July 25, 2008)
Black summer spectacle

Author: Harry Vassallo

The Simshar disaster must have sold lots of newsprint, upping summer
sales from their customary low ebb. We have read and watched in morbid
curiosity or remote sympathy. Nearly all of us have been useless as
far as the victims are concerned and the surge of information will be
pointless unless the facts are reliably established and lessons
learned. And as soon as possible. The most sensible demand made in the
wake of the Simshar was that by the Marsaxlokk Fishermen Cooperative’s
Raymond Bugeja: a demand for a full inquiry.

Only days before, the boat of some friends of mine was hit by gunfire
as they sailed past the Pembroke firing range. They came within
centimetres of providing us with another summer tragedy. Mistress
Elusive could have sailed into St Paul’s Bay with Helen Muscat’s head
all over her yacht’s cabin.

The incident is being investigated at various levels but when will we
all find out what happened, what failed and what, if anything, will be
done to prevent the next near miss or tragedy?

How come we have not had the minister responsible bouncing on the
rebound to show us that matters have been taken in hand at once to
make sure that anything of the sort has been made impossible. He or
she would have been at Miss Muscat’s funeral had she been killed just
as we have had the top brass visiting the sole Simshar survivor in
hospital.

At the last crane disaster (Or was it the one before that?) we were
informed that such occurrences are not logged and studied by experts
in the field and no dedicated archive exists, much less a monitoring
of this activity in such a way that the public can rely on someone
somewhere ensuring that accidents are reduced to the absolute minimum.
Crane accidents have become so frequent that no minister bothers to
show up.

It is no comfort to anyone that inquiring magistrates seem up to their
eyeballs in inquests. Magistrate Giovanni Grixti was so exasperated
that he felt the need to break the traditional silence of his
colleagues to explain that it is unfair to him that the bald
statistics make him out to be among the laggards.

Perhaps prodding the magistrates by publishing statistics is not the
best way to get results.

In many cases an accident provokes multiple inquiries having various
targets. Magistrates determine whether anybody should be called to
answer for any criminal liability. Almost every other public body
could be engaged in its own internal inquiry for internal disciplinary
purposes and to determine the government’s liability. Meanwhile, the
victims have to fend for themselves with regard to recovering
compensation.

Can it all be trimmed down? What if we had one-stop-shops for
inquiries at least in some sectors? Where technical expertise will be
the skill interpreting the available evidence all judicial or quasi
judicial bodies must wait for the experts.

Why not have a team of experts permanently appointed to oversee the
construction industry or the maritime sector? They will require
statutory independence and legal expertise if their findings are to be
relied upon for all purposes. Why should witnesses be called to give
evidence several times to different teams looking into the same facts?
Why should parties seeking civil redress have to follow several
inquiries and await their outcome?

Is it altogether impossible to establish appropriate fora of inquiry,
which will be able to prepare a brief such that both the inquiring
magistrate and any judge called upon to make an award for damages can
rely on the evidence gathered and the methods used to do so? Would
this take some of the workload off the magistracy allowing it to pick
up speed in those cases no other body of persons can delve into?

When a judicial system fails, everything fails. Just because we have
acclimatised to it does not make it any less of a system failure. On
the other hand, an efficient justice system provides benefits not only
in the cases it treats but also in many others it prevents. Knowing
that any accident will bring home responsibility fast and furious will
keep many of us on our toes.

We may become less fatalistic about the construction cowboys who wreck
our homes or take awesome risks with our lives and properties. They
may become more civilised.

If the Simshar had an operational link to the Vessel Monitoring
System, why did it take so long to find the victims? What failed? Can
we rely on such systems or are they all paper tigers? Many more people
than just the incident victims need to know and fast. When will it be
safe to sail past Pembroke? When will it be truly safe to have someone
erect a crane next to one’s home? When will the system work?

Dr Vassallo is former chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green
party.

hcvassallo [Email address: hcvassallo #AT# kemmunet.net.mt - replace #AT# with @ ]

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Article may be viewed at:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20080725/opinion/black-summe
r-spectacle