MCAST lecturer flags Steward’s failure to deliver new nursing school as Prime Minister visits college

A €2 million investment and the creation of a nursing school at St Luke’s Hospital pledged by Vitals Global Healthcare five years ago never materialised.

The information is but a detail in the string of broken promises emanating from the hospitals concession deal that was struck down by the courts last month.

But it is a detail that Ralph Cassar, a lecturer at the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology, has fished out on the day Robert Abela and his Cabinet are holding a special session at the college with young people.

“MCAST and the college staff had to make up for the serious shortcomings of Vitals and Steward Health Care… among the promises made, or rather according to an agreement Vitals and later Steward reached with government in January 2017, the company had to finance a new nursing course at MCAST based on the framework provided by Northumbria University,” Cassar noted.

The funding never came and the new nursing school that had to be part of St Luke’s was never completed. As a result, the course was fully funded by MCAST and is given at the Paola campus and not at the St Luke's nursing school.

Cassar, who is also an MEP candidate for ADPD, said it was thanks to MCAST and its lecturers that the nursing programme became a success.

“The student nurses and the new nurses who graduated achieved what they achieved not thanks to Vitals and Steward, and not even thanks to government which appears to have insisted very little so that the promised €2 million investment and new facilities become a reality,” Cassar added.

Government awarded a concession for three public hospitals – Gozo General, St Luke’s and Karin Grech – to Vitals in 2015 after a tendering process that the National Audit Office deemed to be a done deal.

Vitals never lived up to its contractual obligations and went belly up. In 2018, American company Steward Health Care bought the VGH shares and took over the concession.

The promised investment in new infrastructure failed to materialise and last month Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale struck down the deal.

The court ordered that the three hospitals be returned to government, while attributing fraudulent intent to the private investors and questioning the manner by which public officials entertained an agreement that put the State with its back to the wall.

Steward has appealed the ruling but last week also withdrew from the concession agreement in what the Prime Minister has described as an abandonment.

Government has not appealed the court ruling but in parliament last week, Abela walked a controversial tight rope as he praised Steward’s achievements.

Abela’s reaction was not welcomed by nurses and doctors, who felt the Prime Minister tried to justify the unjustifiable.