Inspections doubled

TL;DR

The Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) tabled its 2025 annual report in parliament on 1 July 2026. MaltaToday reported that inspections “more than doubled”, that about 74% of construction sites met safety standards and that nine workers died. The report itself says that “inspection numbers rising by a further 152.8% in 2025”, that “Approximately 74% of sites were found to be adequately compliant with occupational health and safety requirements” and that “During 2025, nine fatal workplace accidents were recorded”. We checked each against the report and public data.

1. Inspections more than doubled: yes. OHSA's Table 14 gives 23,711 inspections in 2025 against 9,381 in 2024: 2.53 times as many, and 9.2 times the 2,585 of 2023. The divisional figures add up to the total in both years.
2. The 74% is OHSA's own rating, accurately reported, but its base is unstated. Table 6 rates 74% of construction inspections “adequate”, 21% as ending in orders and 5% in stop-work orders. Applied to all 19,296 construction inspections, 5% would be about 965 stop-work orders; OHSA issued 526 in all sectors. So the percentages must rest on a subset the report does not define.
3. The nine deaths are confirmed. Table 1 and Table 5 agree: nine fatal accidents (three in construction, four in transport and storage, two in agriculture); four Maltese and five third-country nationals. OHSA's reports give five deaths in 2023 and five in 2024, so 2025 is the highest of the three years.
4. Doubling the inspections did not coincide with fewer deaths. The claim does not say it would. Context: deaths rose from five to nine while inspections rose 2.5 times; with numbers this small, one year says little about cause.
5. Verdict: largely supported (moderate confidence). All three figures are in the report. “Met safety standards” is a plain-language reading of OHSA's “adequately compliant”, and the base of the 74% cannot be checked from the published tables.

1. Supported
2. Largely supported
3. Not substantiated
4. Misleading
5. Contradicted

IN THIS REPORT

1 The claim and what we could verify

The claim record locates the statement in a MaltaToday report of 1 July 2026 [1]. That article is the outlet's account of the Minister for Infrastructure, Planning and Works, Jonathan Attard, tabling OHSA's Annual Report 2025 in parliament. The wording “more than doubled” is the article's paraphrase of the minister's speech; the 74% and the nine deaths come from the report. We therefore read the primary text, the Annual Report 2025 on OHSA's website [2], in full for the relevant chapters (4 and 8) on 5 October 2026, and quote it below. We also read the 2024 and 2023 reports [3] for earlier figures.

Who said what. The statement belongs to OHSA's report; the minister presented it. The press report does not give the minister's own words for “more than doubled”, so we rate the report's figures, not the outlet's wording.

2 Method

Question. Do the three figures match the report, can they be reproduced from its tables, and what do independent data say about the deaths?

Evidence. We transcribed the report's tables into data/cc-091/ohsa_annual_reports.csv and recomputed each change and total with calc.py (output in data/cc-091/checks.csv). For deaths we downloaded Eurostat's fatal accidents at work (hsw_n2_02) and employment (nama_10_pe) for Malta. Regulator reports and official statistics are grade C in our scale. We found no independent count of inspections: OHSA is the only source for inspection volumes and compliance outcomes, so those figures are self-reported. Verdicts follow the five-point scale in Appendix A.

3 What the data show

Inspections fell from 4,387 in 2022 to 2,585 in 2023, then rose to 9,381 in 2024 and 23,711 in 2025. The report links this to a larger enforcement team, campaign-based inspections and the new Act 33 of 2024. Construction accounts for 19,296 of the 23,711 (81%, the report's “approximately 80%”) and rose 2.66 times from 7,263. The press report adds that the technical enforcement team grew 58% to 38 staff; we did not test that figure. Because 2023 was a low year, “more than doubled” is true on either comparison, but the comparison with 2024 is the fairer one.

OHSA rated 74% of construction inspections adequately compliant, 21% as needing orders and 5% as needing stop-work orders. The weakest feature was the safe use of lifting machinery (65% adequate); falls protection and scaffolds were at 77% and 76%. The finishing stage of construction had the lowest overall compliance (60%). Nine people died: four in transport and storage, three in construction and two in agriculture. Eurostat's count for 2024 is four (OHSA: five; the two use different definitions) and its 2025 figure is not yet published. Dividing OHSA's counts by Eurostat's employment gives a crude rate of 1.6 per 100,000 in 2023, 1.5 in 2024 and 2.7 in 2025; OHSA's own 2024 rate is 1.22 (denominator not stated).

4 Where the evidence points different ways

5 Testing the claim

6 Verdict and requests for evidence

Why. Inspections rose 2.53-fold and the report's own arithmetic holds. The nine deaths agree across two tables and with the sector and nationality splits. The 74% is quoted accurately, but the report does not define the base or the standard, and a plain reading of Table 6 against Table 17 does not reconcile. That keeps the claim just short of Supported. Confidence is moderate because inspection and compliance data come only from OHSA.

What this verdict does not say. It does not rate OHSA's enforcement or the safety of Maltese building sites. Counter-evidence in the claim record (a construction injury rate of 94 per 100,000 and more than half of deaths among migrant workers) concerns outcomes: the report confirms five of nine victims were third-country nationals, and we did not test the 94 figure.

Evidence we are asking for

• From OHSA: the base of Table 6 (inspections or distinct sites; active sites only) and the definition of “adequate compliance”.
• From OHSA: a reconciliation of Table 6's 5% stop-work share with the 526 stop orders in Table 17.
• From OHSA or the NSO: 2025 fatality and injury rates by sector, with their denominators.

7 Limitations

• Inspection counts, compliance outcomes and orders are OHSA's own; we found no independent source for them.
• We did not read the minister's speech in the parliamentary record; the press report is the only account of it.
• Eurostat's 2025 fatal accident count was not available, and its definition differs from OHSA's.
• The crude fatality rates divide OHSA's counts by Eurostat's national-accounts employment; they are not OHSA's rates.
• We did not test the claim record's figure of 94 injuries per 100,000 in construction, or the press report's figures on staffing and helpline calls.

References

1. [1] Zammit, J. (1 July 2026). Nine workers die on the job in 2025 as OHSA inspections more than double. MaltaToday. (Read via Internet Archive copy.) ◆ second-hand locator. https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/142928/nine_workers_die_on_the_job_in_2025_as_ohsa_inspections_more_than_double
2. [2] Occupational Health and Safety Authority (2026). Annual Report 2025. Sections 4.2, 4.3, 8.3; Tables 1, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16, 17, 18. https://ohsa.mt/sites/default/files/2026-05/AR-OHSA-2025.pdf
3. [3] Occupational Health and Safety Authority. Annual Reports 2024 and 2023. https://www.ohsa.mt/sites/default/files/2025-05/AR-OHSA-2024.pdf
4. [4] Eurostat. Fatal accidents at work by NACE Rev. 2 activity (hsw_n2_02), updated 25 Sep 2026; Population and employment, national accounts (nama_10_pe), updated 2 Oct 2026; retrieved 5 Oct 2026. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/hsw_n2_02/default/table
5. [5] MiŻien. Calculation script and outputs: tools/cc-091-report/calc.py; data/cc-091/checks.csv.

Appendix A: series standards and verdict scale

Every investigation in this series follows the same rules so that verdicts are comparable and challengeable.

Confidence

High: multiple independent lines of evidence agree. Moderate: evidence is relevant but incomplete or indirect. Low: evidence is thin, second-hand or conflicting.

Evidence grades

A experiment · B observational study with a control or gradient · C review, guidance or official statistics · D assertion or anecdote. ◆ marks a source known only second-hand.

Standards

• Quote the speaker, not the headline, with outlet and date, and link the original where possible.
• Separate the claim from the evidence offered for it, and say who made which statement.
• Grade the evidence and show differing views side by side where the evidence is unsettled.
• State what we could not access or verify, and what would change the verdict either way.
• Ask for the missing evidence in specific, answerable requests.
• Offer a right of reply where a check finds a claim Not substantiated, Misleading or Contradicted (or a pledge Not measurable, Off track or Missed), before wider circulation, and append responses.
• Correct errors openly with a version number and change log.
• Whistle-blow only on evidence: a verdict of Misleading or Contradicted requires documents or data that can be shown, not inference.
• Check every side. Government, opposition, NGOs and developers are held to the same standard.

Appendix B: revision log