The situation in the health sector is still one of crisis management, according to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
What was wrong six months ago is still wrong today
In a frank admission during a pre-recorded interview on One Radio, the Labour Party station, Dr Muscat spoke of his dissatisfaction with the health sector.
“The Health Minister shares this view and the situation is still one of crisis management,” he said, acknowledging it was unacceptable for patients to wait for hours at emergency and find medicines out of stock.
“Progress has been too little,” he said, adding the Government found a crisis in the health sector when it took office.
Dr Muscat said solutions were not immediate but insisted he was not going to justify the problems patients faced on a regular basis.
“What was wrong six months ago is still wrong today... unlike the Opposition that is now finding fault with situations the previous administration used to justify.”
Although Dr Muscat said the Government wanted to find long-term solutions after “stabilising the crisis”, he gave no details on the way forward.
He said the country had to find different solutions to those sought by the previous administration, which included a reform of primary healthcare.
In a sanitised interview about his administration’s work since the election, Dr Muscat avoided speaking of the controversial appointments of Labour sympathisers to Government boards and breaches of the ministerial code of ethics by Cabinet members.
Dr Muscat also took a dig at the Nationalist Party for not publishing the full report of its election defeat. He insisted this was symptomatic of the PN’s old way of doing politics – keeping things hidden from the public – and said he was worried by the report’s persistent use of the word “perception”.
“It is as if the problems people raised were a figment of their imagination but I did not find a perception of precarious work, I found a real situation.
“The problems in the health sector, housing and ARMS (the utility billing company) are not perceptions but reality,” Dr Muscat said.
He also spoke of the Government’s calls for a series of expressions of interests for developing the shipbuilding area into a maritime hub, the construction of a cruise liner terminal in Gozo and casino licences.
On the political party financing law, Dr Muscat said this was postponed to the year’s end so as not to be perceived as muzzling the PN, which currently has financial problems.
After lifting the time-bar on corruption cases involving politicians, he added, the Government will enact a whistleblower law to protect those who come forward with information.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com