The health ministry was committed to increase qualified medical staff, including nurses, in hospitals and wherever care needed to be given to patients.

The government, the ministry said in a statement, had opened up opportunities for more nurses to enter the public service and to continue increasing their number it was willing to employ foreign qualified ones.

However, the nurses’ union, was objecting to the government’s initiative with the excuse of the language.

The ministry said that Malta always had nurses, midwives, doctors and other professionals who spoke English and they integrated themselves in the different health sectors in a professional way.

The union, the ministry said, was being contradictory when it complained of a lack of nurses but criticised this effort. This was not the first time that the union had objected to an increase in the medical staff. It had also done this during the process to employ operating department practitioners to assist during operations.

Besides these initiatives to find these nurses, the government was to continue to work for an increase in the number of Maltese students training as nurses and for other Matlese qualified nurses who did no longer work to return to the job.#

This included nurses who were over 61 years and flexible hours to accommodate their needs.