Community care offered by the State to housebound patients will no longer be provided by the MMDNA.

A spokesman for the Malta Union of Nurses and Midwives said yesterday the non-profit organisation (the Malta Memorial District Nursing Association) last week informed the Department for the Elderly and Community Care it would be terminating its contract with the government.

The contract provided for free community care to patients living at home.

The MMDNA, which has existed since 1945, makes about 1,000 home visits every day. It offers general nursing services to patients who sign up for the services themselves or are referred to it through the government’s CommCare Assessment Unit.

An MMDNA spokeswoman declined to comment yesterday and said the chairwoman “had no information to give at this point in time”.The organisation employs about 130 nurses, midwives, carers and clerical staff and operates a fleet of 60 cars.

MUMN general secretary Colin Galea said the union was informed on Thursday that the MMDNA would no longer be offering its services to the community.

In recent weeks, the government has been in talks with the MMDNA in an attempt to resolve a number of issues. The decision by the MMDNA to terminate the contract was strange because the union was under the impression that the meetings being held were yielding results, Mr Galea said.

“The government offered the MMDNA a number of incentives, such as a change in the number of hours the staff would work, in an attempt to prevent the termination,” he said.

About three operators were being considered as replacement and more information would be available sometime this week, he added. Mr Galea said those employed by the MMDNA were not concerned about the change in operator because the government had guaranteed that the employees would get the same contract with the same conditions when the new operator took over.

“The government also reassured workers that, during the transition, they would still receive their salaries,” he said.

The union was told a meeting with the new operator would be set up once the selection was made. Questions sent to the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity were still unanswered at the time of writing.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.