Works to install temporary structures at Mater Dei Hospital’s emergency department will be carried out this week after a third test confirmed structural weaknesses in the building.
The Health Ministry yesterday announced this was being done to ensure the safety of both patients and staff.
In addition, an external board of inquiry will be set up to establish the facts and a timeline of events. It will collaborate with the police and appoint technical experts while analysing criminal and civil liabilities, the ministry said.
It added that political, technical and commercial responsibility would have to be shouldered.
Patients and staff could not be left in the dark on possible risks for their own safety
News of structural weaknesses at the emergency department was revealed by The Sunday Times of Malta.
The weaknesses appeared during preliminary checks to ensure the building was able to withstand the load of two new wards, which were set to be constructed on top of it.
Two core stress tests showed that the concrete used in a number of columns was significantly below standard and extremely weak in certain areas. These findings were confirmed yesterday as the results of a third test carried out in the UK were released.
Due to the fact that the two wards were being co-financed by the EU, the government was bound to complete the project by no later than June 2015, or lose about €9.5 million from Brussels.
As a result, the ministry immediately started looking for alternative sites – two have been earmarked but no announcement has been made yet.
Meanwhile, a number of temporary measures to reinforce the defective columns constructed between February and March 1996 will be implemented with immediate effect.
Also, a site survey of the entire hospital building will be carried out, by a foreign company specialised in this field.
Just hours before this announcement, the Opposition requested an urgent meeting of the Parliamentary Committee for Health to discuss the situation. In a letter to committee chairman and Labour MP Etienne Grech, the two Opposition members, Claudio Grech and Michael Gonzi, remarked that about 350 patients and hospital staff could be at risk.
They said that the presence of structural defects was not a matter of opinion but a state of fact based on whether the quality of the building conformed to the standards stipulated by the contract.
They noted that the entire hospital building had been certified by architects, firms and officials who had shouldered legal, commercial and professional responsibility.
The Opposition also sought clarification on whether the building required intervention as it was not safe in its present state or whether this would only be necessary if additional structures were added.
In view of this, the two Nationalist MPs said they felt the need to urgently reconvene the committee, remarking that patients and staff could not be left in the dark on possible risks for their own safety.