5 - 11 April 2001

Stumbling blocks in the building industry

George Xuereb, President of the Federation of Building Contractors and Civil Engineers, explains to Blanche Gatt the industry’s concerns over the lack of a skilled construction workforce

After a slowdown spanning over half a decade, the construction industry is preparing itself for an upturn. A long list of major government and infrastructural projects has been drawn up – among these several projects that have been hyped for years – that the Federation of Building Contractors and Civil Engineers (FOBC) calculates will be worth over Lm200m a year if they are all carried out.
But while all these imminent jobs sound like a promising boost to the industry, the FOBC is beginning to wonder whether, with the human resources available, their members will actually be in a position to carry out the contracts they are eventually awarded.
The FOBC and the ETC recently carried out an intensive exercise to evaluate the people currently registering for employment with the construction industry, and the results of this study confirmed the Federation’s fears: Of the 590 people on this list only 161 were deemed possibly eligible for employment in the construction industry. Of the others, 177 did not bother to turn up to their interview and 252 were found to be unsuitable for the construction industry.
“These results did not surprise us at all,” said George Xuereb, president of FOBC, during an interview. “We knew all along that few of these 590 people are interested in working in the construction industry. And it still remains to be seen whether the 161 deemed eligible will actually accept employment when they are sent for.”
The study was conducted with the specific intention of proving a fact the FOBC had been insisting on for some time – they were unable to meet their human resources needs from the local employment pool, and wanted to import foreign workers with specific skills.
“Our members had sent the Department of Citizenship and Expatriate Affairs 129 applications for work permits to be extended or
granted. These were for specialised form work erectors, steel fixers and other skilled construction workers that are simply not available on the local employment market. We got no response, though most of these were submitted as long ago as November. The reason we were given was these 590 people registering at ETC. This despite the fact that ETC supported our claim that these people were not suitable or skilled in the trades required.”
The construction industry needs the influx of foreign workers urgently, insisted George Xuereb. “For us this is an immediate need,” he said. “We need these specialised construction tradesmen in order to complete works in hand within the stipulated period. Some of us are incurring heavy penalties because we can’t complete works. However, if all the major projects and infrastructural works planned by government materialise, and the ones already started begin to move at a faster pace, then we will find that we definitely have no skilled labour on the island. The projects I’m talking about include the Cottonera project, the Cruise Liner Terminal, Manoel Island, White Rocks, City Gate, the roads: so many have been planned. The labour shortage problem is going to be even more acute when these get off the ground.”
At present, the 29 members of the FOBC employ around 2,000 people directly in the building trade. “But this figure,” added George, “goes up to well over five to six thousand when you take into consideration the ancillary trades connected with the construction industry, starting from the drawing board with architects and designers and continuing to the end, with cleaners.”
FOBC, however, says they don’t know how many additional workers they will need – it all depends on when and if these major projects they are believe will alleviate the present sluggishness of the construction industry take off. “We contractors cannot plan ahead,” said George.
“We live from day to day. We never know what jobs we are going to get and when. However, an added obstacle is that building permits take so long to be issued. When the permit is finally out the contractor has to do miracles and complete a project in a quarter of the supposed time. They are forced to make up for the lost time, but this is wrong. Unreasonable deadlines result in bad workmanship, litigation – nature shows us that a woman needs nine months to gestate a baby from conception to birth. If the baby is born too early the chances are there would be problems.”
The Federation was formed, George explains, specifically to work on improving conditions for contractors. “We are working under unheard of conditions,” insisted George. “Our conditions of contract are always biased towards the developers or government itself, and we are insisting that new contract conditions on a par with the rest of Europe are introduced.
“Changes would affect the current status of things like payment terms, guarantees, the special hypotech on all contractor’s property for 15 years, the fact that contractors are invariably made to wait for payment, and often has to actually beg for his money and deferred payments. These are things we have to put up with, but strangely enough when foreign contractors carry out works here
in Malta, they are not expected
to accept these conditions – which they would never tolerate
anyway.”
Health and safety conditions for workers on building sites is an issue that concerns many observers, and George Xuereb tells me that the Federation takes the subject very seriously indeed.
“First of all,” he said, “I have to say that I strongly believe most of the accidents on building sites occur through the carelessness of the workman himself. They often refuse to wear safety equipment, and if you try to impose it on him, who will do his job if he walks off? However, this is a big issue with us, and in fact very shortly we will be employing independent safety officers who will make regular visits to the sites of all our members to ensure they are complying with the rules on health and safety in line with legislation. These officers will be appointed imminently, though I don’t have an exact date yet.”
A simmering issue that is overshadowing the above for the moment is worries over the Ministry of Tourism’s suggestion that contractors in touristic zones should only be allowed to work from 9am to 2pm in summer.
“This would be the last blow to all civil engineering and construction companies,” said George. “Who is going to finance the wages of the workers between 7 and 9am and from 2 to 4 pm?”
“The construction industry has been going through a very lean period,” he continued, “which looks like it is picking up again now. However, if all the projects materialise and the relevant building permits are issued, we are going to have to have decent conditions in place, and very importantly, we are going to have to have the right tools to work with.
And for us, that means the right, suitably-skilled people.
The FOBC now hopes that, having proved their point about the local dearth of specialised workers, permits for the foreign workers they have requested, mainly from Yugoslavia, will now be issued.
However, their study exposed a lot more than the fact that certain skilled workers are needed. “The fact that more than one in three did not even bother to turn up for their interview with the Board,” said George, “shows us that many are abusing the right to register for employment. It is obvious that these are working somewhere else. And of course, we knew that this was happening. However, they are not working with any of the 29 members of the FOBC. This we do know. So they must either be working with some small contractor or on their own.”
It is clear that a wide scale abuse of the system has been uncovered, and some of the responses the interviewers got were truly outrageous. “A number of applicants,” said George, “actually had the nerve to state before the board that they had no intention of working because life was easier that way! Some said they were getting old so they wanted to call it a day, others said they feel rather tired for any kind of work – the prize however goes to a 20-year-old who claims to be good at stone sculpture and restoration, but prefers to stay in bed till 10am and then do whatever pleases him through the rest of the day!”
Benefits fraud is a crime against each and every responsible tax-payer on the island. But, if the FOBC’s interpretation of the situation is correct, then in this case at least, benefit fraud is costing more than the taxpayer’s money. It is disabling one of Malta’s largest industries, and hindering the completion of projects that would bring a diverse range of benefits and advantages if they were finished. FOBC dedicated almost a full month to the study with ETC to discover that two thirds of registering unemployed construction workers were frauds or wrongly assigned. It is high time the entire unemployment register is put under the same scrutiny, and other industry leaders would do well to follow the FOBC’s lead in this.