A former hospital employee suffered “humiliation, pain, suffering, and had her dignity trampled upon” when she was transferred in violation of her contract, according to the Office of the Ombudsman.

Charmaine Attard should be reinstated as director of nursing and midwifery at the hospital – a role she was transferred from two-and-a-half years before her contract expired, the Ombudsman’s Commissioner for Health recommended.

Following the Ombudsman’s recommendations, Ms Attard yesterday took her legal battle for reinstatement a step further and filed an application in the First Hall of the Civil Court against the Prime Minister, the Health Minister and the Foundation for Medical Services. She is calling on the court to order her reinstatement at the main hospital and for the authorities to pay damages she suffered.

In a detailed report submitted along with the application, Health Commissioner Charles Messina concluded that the authorities had “acted incorrectly” and, “as of right”, Ms Attard “should ideally be placed in the position she was in before”. If this were not possible, she should be awarded €2,000 in compensation, he said.

Mr Messina said Ms Attard had effectively been transferred from an 850-bed hospital to a 269-bed one and, in effect, no longer directed any midwifery service as this was not offered at Karin Grech Hospital.

Describing the move as having “trampled on Ms Attard’s dignity”, Mr Messina concluded that “the essential parts of her contractual obligations were taken away from her without her consent”.

The move is a demotion, which greatly affected her professionally and psychologically

Ms Attard signed a three-year contract at Mater Dei on November 23, 2012. However, on May 16, 2013, she was verbally informed by the Health Minister’s former head of secretariat, Claudio Tonna, that she had to renounce her position.

She is claiming Mr Tonna had instructed her to “move out... as a third party was to occupy [her] post”, a statement that was never denied by the ministry’s permanent secretary, Joseph Rapa.

Mr Rapa insisted Ms Attard had not been subjected to any discrimination and the move was prompted entirely by “service exigencies”.

“On several occasions it was made very clear that her redeployment from Mater Dei Hospital was prompted by a pressing need to improve the quality of nursing service provision at Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital,” he said.

Mr Messina, however, concluded that Ms Attard’s contract “strongly” emphasised that she was to be employed at Mater Dei, adding that her argument that her new duties were not compatible with her contract was “very plausible, if not the only plausible interpretation”.

In the report, Mr Messina described the move as “a demotion, which greatly affected her professionally and psychologically”.

He added that if Ms Attard’s services were needed at Karin Grech, as had been stated by Mr Rapa, then this could have been done by adding it to her duties, as had previously been done when Boffa Hospital had been included in her duties.

Mr Messina argued that the post could have been given to Ms Attard’s replacement as this was “smaller and easier to handle for a person with less managerial experience than Ms Attard”.