Nurses’ union laments recent rise in ‘senseless’ parking fines at Mater Dei

The nurses’ union is lamenting the recent increase in parking fines being issued to its members for parking at Mater Dei Hospital, saying that the recently-appointed new contractor has only made the situation worse.

In a statement issued this morning, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurse said it was receiving complaints from nurses, midwives, physiotherapists and ECG technicians who work at the state hospital, that they have been receiving numerous “senseless” parking fines for which no explanation was forthcoming from the authorities concerned.

“In recent weeks, the government announced that the contractor in charge of parking at Mater Dei had changed,” the union said, “MUMN was expecting the parking situation to improve, but the opposite happened, because things deteriorated to the extent that our members are having problems they never encountered before.”

The union said there was “no control” over parking at the hospital, leading to cases where non-staff members were freely leaving their cars in staff parking areas. “No wonder all parking spaces are being taken up, and it’s so difficult to find a free space unless you go to work at least an hour and a half before your shift starts,” it said.

It emphasised that the contractor hadn’t targeted the source of the problem, instead choosing to issue fines haphazardly.

"MUMN isn’t surprised that the contractor didn’t go to the root of the problem faced by employees, because there would have been no profit to make here. To start making a profit, it instead changed the parking rules, and, without informing the workers, started issuing a substantial number of fines every day,” it said.

The union said it didn’t expect any better from the private sector, but it did not expect that the government and the hospital’s management would allow such behaviour. “We would have hoped that the contractor would not make up for the money lost, due to the cheaper rates announced by the government, in this way, by abusing the system.”

“It’s enough that the contractor did not fix the [savage] way parking is managed at Mater Dei, so it shouldn’t have used this situation as an opportunity to issue citations left, right and centre,” it emphasised.

The union - underlining the fact that the citations were effectively stealing money from its members and their families - went on to appeal to the government and the hospital’s management to urgently address the situation.

It warned that it would organise a protest on the hospital's grounds if nothing is done.