Chickens coming home to roost

We will not speak today about the latest developments at Air Malta because the story is still developing and we will see in the coming days what further developments there will be. But we can and indeed we will speak about another issue that is also within Konrad Mizzi’s remit: the Vitals mess.

In this and also in the other mess that is the American University of Malta, the government’s chickens are coming home to roost.

The Vitals mess will be debated in the House on Wednesday. The government refused the plea by the Opposition for the issue to be debated in the Health Committee because, the government said, a discussion at plenary is more suited.

This is government being disingenuous: a discussion at committee stage would have enabled the committee to summon witnesses and to question them. This cannot be done in a discussion at plenary.

There are many questions that need to be asked on the original deal which has now fallen through. The government had previously defended the deal to the extent that

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when it was finally made to publish the relevant contracts, they were so heavily redacted as to be nearly illegible.

Even before entering into the discussion about what went wrong, the deal itself is highly suspect. Now we are being told that the money the state paid to Vitals did not cover the salaries of the employees for that is forked out by the government itself. We also know that no money has been spent on the needed repairs and maintenance of the Gozo Hospital nor on St Luke’s and Karen Grech hospitals.

Nor on equipment, which, we are told, was sold off at the price of €1. So where did the money go? And what was the justification for increasing the budget allocation in recent months when we now come to know Minister Mizzi knew of Vitals’ plight from some months back?

At this point, we can only look backwards for the new contractor has yet to make his presence felt in Malta. But even looking back the country can and should investigate this mess and if need be, apportion blame. And in any rule of law country, blame brings with it as a minimum resignations if not criminal investigations as well.

The other issue, the AUM mess, carries the same fingerprints even if not necessarily Konrad Mizzi’s. There are the same tell-tale signs of inadequate screening, policy on the hoof, people with no track record at all being given on the one hand three hospitals and on the other a new university with historic buildings and a slice of badly-needed coastal area. We do not know if money exchanged hands but would not be surprised if we were to find that something like that did happen.

The government would have us believe that it has found a solution in the case of Vitals but the country must insist on knowing what exactly happened and where we go from here. And of course who the new contractor is and what he intends to do with our healthcare. As regards AUM, the numbers speak for themselves, as does the shabby treatment meted out to the academic staff and the unfairness of their being reminded they signed a confidentiality agreement.

Yes, they did, but AUM signed to give them a decent salary for their pains not to render them jobless and penniless.