I have been a patient at Mater Dei Hospital for the past three weeks and I must say that the medical services offered are of an excellent nature. The doctors, nurses and other staff do their job with conscientiousness, efficiency and care, trying to make it as easy as possible for the people under their responsibility. In spite of the difficult job and the irritability of many of the patients – who likes to be in hospital, especially over the Christmas period? – they do their best to make it as easy as possible, apart from being so gentle and kind in their medical care.

There is only one poor service at the hospital – and this has nothing to do with medicine. It is the Melita communications service.

I have been using at least €10 a day to be able to use the phone, surf the internet and watch television. Yet, on three occasions, the money that was topped up onto my card was “swallowed” up without having been used.

In the first instance, I did not keep the receipt, and so the €10 I topped up – which had mysteriously gone down to a few cents – were lost. I was told by a Melita representative that someone must have switched cards while I was out of the ward. He did not even realise that due to my condition I could not leave my bed. Treating me as being senile was a very offensive way of dealing with the situation. But I guess this is the “excuse” that Melita staff use in the circumstances to try to justify what happened.

In the second instance, when I experienced a similar problem and complained about it, I was refunded €4 by the Melita representative who turned up next to my bedside. Four, not 10.

The third time I was not lucky again. A new card, with supposedly €10 on it, was given to me by my sister, instead of the usual bottle of water or packet of biscuits, when she came to visit me. Yet, when I tried to use it, there was only a few cents on it. It was a brand new card. When I complained I had to lump it because I had not asked my sister for the receipt.

This is the kind of service that Melita offers to its customers at the hospital. People in hospital are at a most vulnerable position and are certainly more worried about other things than communications services, and yet they have to deal with these irritating and frustrating issues.

I guess it is the price we have to pay for Melita having a monopoly at Mater Dei. I am sure that they will try to offer a better service if they had competition. And probably they would have to reduce the prices of their service too.

■ Henry Calleja

St Julian’s