The Voice of the Workers UHM and the Medical Association of Malta today filed a judicial protest calling on the government to publish its public private partnership and hospital operations agreement with Vitals Global Healthcare.
The company was chosen as the preferred bidder for a private public partnership to revamp three hospitals with an investment of €220 million. The hospitals are the Gozo General Hospital, St Luke's Hospital (picture) and Karin Grech Hospital.
In their protest, signed by lawyer Ian Spiteri Bailey, the unions also called on the government to send all contracts to the Auditor General for the due diligence process. The UĦM and the MAM also held the authorities responsible for damages.
UĦM and MAM argued that they were in negotiations with the government on the running of Karin Grech, St Luke's and Gozo hospitals and had been asking to see the agreement reached with Vitals for a long time.
Having knowledge of the agreement would give them a better opportunity to reach consensus with the government as they needed to know the conditions agreed upon between the government and Vitals.
Vitals issued a call for applications for professionals in the past days, an indication that the PPP process was to continue.
It was immature and unacceptable for the unions to see the government authorising and allowing Vitals to continue with its process to operate the hospitals especially since it did not seem that it had the necessary permits and licences.
Such licences were nowhere to be found in the public domain and the courts should ensure that all necessary permission was obtained, the unions argued.
In a statement, the Nationalist Party praised the unions' initiative and called on the government to accede to this request.
The PN said it has been arguing for the past months that such contracts should be made public, but the government has never accepted. These contracts were negotiated by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri before the news broke about their secret companies in Panama.