The Malta Developers Association president Sandro Chetcuti said the registry, which is a joint initiative between the Building Regulation Office and the MDA, would contain the details of all excavation and demolition contractors, bricklayers and builders in the sector.
Chetcuti said that registration for these three groups would be “obligatory” and all those involved would have to register themselves by the end of September.
However, when asked what steps would be taken when it came to those who failed to register, he said that there should be no reason why those in the sector should refrain from doing so.
“Those who don’t bother to register won’t bother to obtain a license once the license system is in place,” he remarked.
Underlining that the MDA had already received a hundred registration applications in the two days since the registry was launched, Chetcuti said that “most of those in the construction industry want to regularise themselves.”
“We have been insisting on such a registry for years, and, at last, the time has come to start regularising the industry,” he said.
The head of the Building Regulation Office, Michael Ferry, said the register is the beginning of the work which needs to be done on this sector, a “building block exercise”.
Ferry explained the importance of the registration by giving an example of the building of the Maltese temples. “There is only record of where the actual stone came from, but no register of who actually built it, and that is what we are trying to do, to develop a register for all contractors and builders.”
He said that this registration process will not slow down the industry but instead increase work. “The construction industry is not a game, but is the backbone of how the Maltese economy is working, and it must remain sustainable.”
Ferry explained that the second phase of the registration will be verifying and the classification of people working in the industry and their specialised skills.
“This is an important collaboration and we already have timelines and a plan of where we want to see the construction industry in the future.”
