While facing a deep corruption crisis, the government of Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi is now also lying to sick people, hospital patients, vulnerable men and women and all their relatives, the Nationalist Party said.
The government’s boasting about an annual report about Mater Dei Hospital confirms that Joseph Muscat is cut off from reality, and it is not only not resolving the waiting lists problem but it is not even recognising it.
In a press conference in front of Mater Dei Hospital, shadow minister for health Claudette Buttigieg said that the worst thing one can do when in power is not to accept what the problems are. If one does not understand that a problem exists, then one cannot take any action to resolve it.
This is a direct insult to the people of Malta and Gozo, she said.
Health Minister Konrad Mizzi is embroiled in the Panama Papers scandal, which is huge in terms of corruption and crime.
The government is boasting that in the last three years matters have drastically improved at the hospital, but contrary to this, the Medical Association of Malta has said that anyone who wants an appointment with a specialist has to wait for more than a year.
The government also tried to give the impression that 48 new consultants were added to the staff at the hospital but, in fact, only five had been employed, Dr Buttigieg said. None of them work in the medical and surgical sectors.
Social Policy shadow minister Paula Mifsud Bonnici said that the people who are being hit the hardest from growing waiting lists is that part of the population – some 100,000 – who are at risk of poverty.
There are many people who cannot afford private medical treatment, and this meant that the public health service is letting them down.
The reality for some is to open companies in Panama but the reality for most people is that they need to make many sacrifices and also depend on the health services offered at the public hospital.
The government should at least recognise it has a problem and start addressing it, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said.