Azzopardi wants Clayton Bartolo investigated over prefabricated hospital

Nationalist Party MP Jason Azzopardi has called on the acting police commissioner to investigate parliamentary secretary Clayton Bartolo’s interest in the government’s prefabricated hospital tender.

The PN MP said in parliament tonight that he had received “incriminating information” which suggested the parliamentary secretary had taken interest in the tender.

Government had issued a call for the purchase, delivery and installation of a prefabricated hospital capable of caring for over 90 patients at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March.

The government later announced it would not be pursuing the idea, as the number of COVID-19 patients remained low.

Azzopardi had claimed back in March that the hospital was “a scandal in the making”, a statement that prompted Health Minister Chris Fearne to order an investigation into the claims of wrongdoing.

Jason Azzopardi said that the health minister had avoided “not without reason” a parliamentary question asked by himself, which looked to understand Bartolo’s role in the prefabricated hospital.

“I alleged that a Parliamentary Secretary, not within the Health Ministry and who does not have anything to do with health matters and contracts, took a particular interest in a tender worth many, many millions,” he said.

He also said that Bartolo did this without informing both the health and finance minister.

“Will the Police Commissioner now take an interest to investigate the interest that this Parliamentary Secretary took in a public call for a prefabricated hospital which has now been abandoned after I outed it as a sham?” he said.

He also noted that according to law, the police commissioner has the obligation to open an investigation into all information which comes to his attention, even without a formal report.

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