The government appears to have changed its plans to transfer cancer services from Boffa Hospital to Zammit Clap Hospital and it will instead build a new Oncology centre at Mater Dei Hospital, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat said this evening.

Speaking in Parliament, he said the Opposition had nothing against investment in this sector, late as it was, but why had the government changed plans it announced just last year, and why had it kept its decision under wraps?

The only brief reference to this subject in the budget speech was that the new Oncology centre would cost €24 million of which €4 million would be allocated this year.

It appeared, Dr Muscat said, that the builders would return to Mater Dei – even though the hospital was 14 years in the making.

The new Oncology centre would be built, over a period of three years, instead of the parking area near the outpatients’ department.

Dr Muscat said this was a reflection of incompetence. The government, he said, needed to explain its change of heart unless one was led to thinking that this subject too was raised for electoral reasons.