It looks like the new medical school project is going to turn out to be another gas-fired power station – and it doesn’t help that the minister in charge is the same one.
The school is committed to a start date of September next year, but nobody yet knows exactly how it will work out – including Queen Mary University itself, which has told its students that the Malta government will be “investing heavily” in facilities at the Gozo hospital and building student accommodation.
Meanwhile, the Malta government has not told the Maltese public that it will be investing heavily in anything at all, but rather the opposite. It has said that it will be issuing a call for expressions of interest from private sector organisations which may wish to invest. Eighteen months before the new school goes live and the government – which has told Queen Mary University that it will be making the investment itself – has yet to set about finding somebody to do the work and pay for it.
Except that, in the case of the Gozo hospital at least, it has reached an agreement already with Oxley Capital Group of Singapore, a fact which I happened to find out quite by chance. The government has ignored my questions on the matter, because it still plans to go ahead with issuing a call for expressions of interest in the pretence that it hasn’t struck a deal already – which means that rather a lot of companies with no time or money to waste will be wasting time and money preparing proposals that will be used for the sole purpose of validating the government’s decision to reach a deal without an open call.
In other words, that’s exactly what happened with the power station, where it was plain as day that the Labour Party, while still campaigning for election to government, had the full details of a plan provided by collaborators who then got the job – and couldn’t get it off the ground, with the result that we are past the deadline for commissioning and operation and construction hasn’t even begun yet while members of the consortium continue to push and pull against each other.
Of course, the missing bit of information at this stage is: what is in it for Oxley Capital Group? This is a private investment company and not an organisation involved in the buying or management of hospitals and clinics. Its business is to put other people’s money where it thinks it can best make a profit. So if it pays for the refurbishment of Gozo General Hospital and the building of a new wing, on what basis will it get a return and secure its capital? That’s what the government needs to tell us – or, more properly, Parliament. But first it has got to admit to striking this deal already and it is quite obviously reluctant to do that.
Will the return on investment come from bringing in private (paying) patients from overseas, for whom this new wing will be reserved – what Konrad Mizzi and Chris Fearne have called ‘medical tourism’? Perhaps – but then who will be paying whom for what, given that the hospital staff are in the employment of the Department of Health and paid out of public funds? This medical tourism wing will also have to be managed by a hospital management company because Oxley Capital does not involve itself in the management of projects – it’s just an investor. Who will pay the hospital management company – the government of Malta or Oxley Capital? Or will be hospital management company take fees from the patients? But then what will Oxley Capital take? Who will own the new hospital wing if Oxley Capital has paid for it? Is it actually going to pay for it, or is it simply going to finance (as in bank-roll) the Malta government’s project, which means that the Malta government will have to pay it back with interest? The fact that Queen Mary University has been told that it is the government which will be making the investment strongly suggests this last possibility, but then the government may have lied to Queen Mary University. It’s not such an outlandish idea, given all that we have seen and not been told.
This is a matter for Parliament. Claudette Buttigieg, the shadow minister for health, should get in there and pin Konrad Mizzi to the wall – yes, Konrad Mizzi, not Chris Fearne, because Mizzi is the boss and Fearne is his junior, who reports to him. Opposition MP Albert Fenech should be speaking about this, too, in and out of Parliament. It most certainly is his field, and he is in a position to wipe the floor with Konrad Mizzi, who knows nothing about medicine, medical care, hospitals, teaching hospitals, university hospitals and doctor training.
What should have been the most transparent government ever in the history of these islands has turned out to be the most opaque. No doubt it is taking instruction and inspiration from its fellow-travellers in Baku and Beijing.
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