Paul Pace seeks investigation into acquisition of his personal information by Manuel Cuschieri

Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses (MUMN) president Paul Pace has filed a judicial protest to demand an investigation into how confidential information from his personnel records ended up in the hands of a Labour Party talk show host and newspaper.

Pace is himself currently the subject of an internal investigation into possible overtime abuse, which was launched as a result of allegations made by Labour political talk show pundit Manuel Cuschieri.

In April, just two days after the union suspended a series of directives issued to nurses at health centres and the Gozo General Hospital, at a time when talks between the MUMN and the Health Ministry over nurses’ working conditions had stalled, Cuschieri used his radio show to accuse Pace of having claimed several hours of overtime at Mount Carmel Hospital, when he had, in fact, been on holiday in Egypt.

Pace has denied the allegations, telling the Times that he will “wait without fear for the investigation to conclude."

In a judicial protest filed by Pace on August 17 against the Health Ministry and chief executives of Mount Carmel and Mater Dei hospitals, he states that someone had passed on information extracted from his personal employee records at one of the hospitals to Cuschieri, who proceeded to broadcast this information on the radio and television, “in flagrant breach of data protection law and possibly other laws.” 

In handing over that information, Cuschieri’s source had also breached the Public Administration Act and the Public Service Disciplinary Regulations, Pace said.

More detailed allegations had subsequently emerged in a Facebook post uploaded late last month by lawyer Jason Azzopardi. “So, if you threaten the Government with a strike by nurses, you are not arrested or interrogated over a €90,000 fraud which you admitted to in writing, and you are not dismissed from your Government job,” Azzopardi’s post reads.

Disciplinary proceedings against Pace that were launched as a result of the allegations featured in a front-page story on the Sunday Times of Malta, had been leaked to the paper by someone who “evidently had all the relative information about those proceedings,” Pace said. MaltaToday had been the first to report that the agreement was being delayed by an investigation.

“Wonder of wonders, this information was handed to the Sunday Times precisely the day after an absolute majority of MUMN members had approved the new sectoral agreement, which both the protestant, as President and spokesperson for the MUMN and the Office of the Prime Minister had been praising this agreement…” reads the judicial protest.

Not only did the transmission of this information to the Sunday Times of Malta breach the law, but it was also an “unabashed act of contempt towards the Disciplinary Board,” that had been appointed to hear and decide the case against him, Pace said.

The judicial protest, signed by lawyer Chris Cilia, states that it is also being served on the Principal Permanent Secretary, without naming him as a party, to ensure that the investigation takes place.