Adrian Delia: Muscat and Fearne know truth about Vitals contract, but cannot speak

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and deputy leader and health minister Chris Fearne knew the truth about why Vitals Global Healthcare were brought to Malta, given €60 million by the government, but were then allowed to leave only three years into a 30 year concession agreement, however they couldn’t say the truth about it, Opposition leader Adrian Delia said today.

Speaking to Nationalist Party followers at the AZAD Foundation in Valletta this morning, Delia questioned why VGH were being treated like the government’s biggest friends and handled with kid gloves.

“How can the government boast about a surplus but not be able to invest in health, and instead bring in a company nobody knew anything about to take over [St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo hospitals]?” he asked.

Regarding the court case he had filed earlier this month against the government and Vitals, asking for the contract to be cancelled and the hospitals returned to the public, he said that when there was wrong the Opposition had to act and be the voice of those who couldn’t speak.

It had to be the one to safeguard the country’s interests, he maintained.

Eurobarometer survey

In reference to the findings of a Eurobarometer survey published recently, showing that crime was the Maltese people’s biggest concern -with 45% saying they were preoccupied about it - Delia said that people had lost trust in the police and did not believe the government was interested in law and order.

“Nobody has faith in the Police Commissioner. Our police corps are amongst the lowest paid in Europe. But the government does not concede there is a problem - it says it is a government which listens, but it is listening to nobody,” he said.

“There are a series of [Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit] reports which clearly show certain government officials should be investigated,” he said, in connection to leaked FIAU documents on the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri and tourism minister Konrad Mizzi.

Turning to immigration - cited in the survey as the second biggest concern, with 32% of respondents saying it worried them - Delia said that the government’s response to the large increase in Malta’s population in the past three years was to allow rent rates to soar.

Foreigners in our country were not coming to fill needed slots in certain sectors as was done previously, he said. They were now coming to take on low-paid work, and were living in properties which they had to share with several others.

The so-called socialist government was forgetting all those who were not making ends meet, he remarked.

He asked how many new social housing units were built, as he noted that another major concern to the Maltese was ‘housing’, according to the survey.

“We need to start speaking more about things which affect people, not things which affect the country,” he maintained.

“The Labour Party was completely against joining the European Union. We are now seeing the fruits of our membership, but the government wants to take the merit for this itself. Several important sectors were only established because we are EU members and in the Eurozone,” he said.

Moving on to the country’s reputation, he said the government had practically destroyed the repute Malta had built for itself.

The government started by selling our citizenship and our passports - the things which make us who we are, he told supporters, but did not manage to created any new economic sector and was enjoying the fruit of the Nationalist government’s work.

“If only one voice remains in Malta - regardless of surveys or popularity - which stands up for democracy and for what is good, then the Nationalist Party will never lose,” he said in his closing comments.