The Public Accounts Committee will on Monday discuss a request by the doctors’ association and the country’s second largest trade union to investigate the deal on the privatisation of three hospitals.

PAC chairman Tonio Fenech said the item would appear on the agenda of Monday’s sitting.

Asked if the PAC would be proceeding with the investigation, Mr Fenech said it was a legitimate request and it would look very bad if the government were to use its majority on the PAC to try to block it.

In a strongly worded letter to the PAC, the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin and the Medical Association of Malta questioned Vitals Global Healthcare’s ability to raise the necessary financing to make good on its promise to invest about €220 million in the running of the Gozo, Karin Grech and St Luke’s hospitals.

She expected those involved in the signing of the contracts to be called to testify before the committee

They quoted Health Minister Chris Fearne saying recently that two-thirds of the financing of the project would come from Allianz. However, they continued, there was absolutely no reference to such investment by Allianz in the public domain.

The Attorney General has also been asked to conduct its own due diligence process regarding Vitals.

The Parliamentary Health Committee has also agreed to a request by the Nationalist Party to discuss the contracts that were signed with Vitals.

Shadow health minister Claudette Buttigieg asked the committee to investigate why the government had withheld 60 pages of the contracts from publication.

She expected those involved in the signing of the contracts to be called to testify before the committee.

In a letter sent to the media yesterday, chairman Etienne Grech said the committee would be meeting in the coming days to discuss the contracts.

Vitals won a tender to run the hospitals in September 2015. It later emerged that the government was in talks with the Singapore-based company behind Vitals before the official tendering process started.

The company originally proposed a project that was solely focused on the Gozo hospital. This proposal was declined by the government, but VGH later went on to win the concession for the three hospitals.

jacob.borg@timesofmalta.com