The much-publicised scheme allowing people to collect free medicine from their chosen pharmacy remains a pilot project more than one-and-a-half years after it was launched.
"I am very angry about it. There is no reason on earth why we should not have moved on with implementing what was agreed," Mario Debono, from the pharmacy owners' section of the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises - GRTU, said.
Introduced in January last year, weeks before the general election, the scheme was seen as a breath of fresh air by patients who previously had to queue, sometimes for hours, to pick up medicine they were entitled to for free from government pharmacies.
The plan was for the scheme to be rolled out across the country by the end of 2008, the deadline eventually being extended to last March. But even this was missed. Last July, the authorities stopped the roll-out to evaluate the scheme, which caters for 31,000 patients in 27 localities.
The scheme experienced a number of hiccups, even before it was launched, especially due to lack of human resources.
A spokesman for the Health Parliamentary Secretariat would not give a deadline for the next expansion to more areas, only saying that the roll-out was expected to continue "in the coming months".
But Mr Debono said he could not see why the government would not continue with the expansion. "We are not launching the Titanic or sending man to the moon," he said. Similarly, the president of the Malta Chamber of Pharmacists, Mary Ann Sant Fournier admitted she did not expect the break in the roll-out to take so long.
Moreover, there was severe lack of communication between Social Policy Minister John Dalli, the chamber and the GRTU, which were signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding on the scheme.
"When the roll-out was stopped so the system could be evaluated, re-engineered and fully implemented, as provided for by the understanding, we expected extensive meetings with the government, as equal partners," she said. Instead, there was a meeting with Mr Dalli last November and the standing advisory committee handling the scheme only resumed its meetings in February 2009, eight months after the expansion was halted.
"There has been no sharing of ideas," Ms Sant Fournier said, adding that as front-liners, pharmacists had a valuable input to give.
An evaluation carried out by the two organisations pointed at the positive impact the scheme had on the public and also the pharmacists' enthusiasm in embracing the project. But it also underlined the general need for fine-tuning the system organisation and IT architecture in order to reflect the stated vision of the whole project. The evaluation report was sent to the authorities last summer. Mr Debono said not only did the two organisations not receive feedback from the authorities but neither were the GRTU and the chamber given a copy of the results of the evaluation carried out by the authorities.
"We should be directly involved in the management of the system because this is a tri-partite agreement. We are not just another government department," he said.
The spokesman for the parliamentary secretariat said the evaluation was carried out with the intention of strengthening and maximising efficiency and to establish the "best-fit" management approach. The evaluation kicked off after a change of management in the department responsible for the scheme.
The spokesman said that during this "lull period", the government focused its energy on boosting the key determinant factors like the IT software systems, workforce capacity, office infrastructure and operational process, "including a substantial financial and human resource investment", in preparation for the next expansion.
He said an educational campaign was in the pipeline to ensure maximum harmonisation and collaboration among all clients and to pave the way for the roll-out in the coming months.