Security officials at Mount Carmel Hospital did not have licences mandatory for all private guards, the Auditor General has found.

This emerged from a report on follow-up audits that was tabled in Parliament. The exercise is meant to establish whether shortcomings highlighted in previous audits were addressed or not.

The National Audit Office urged the mental health hospital to step up its level of internal controls, especially issues related to the procurement of services. It pointed out that no progress was reported on a number of shortcomings it had highlighted despite the problems flagged being within “high risk area of operations”.

Apart from those providing security services at the hospital not being covered by a formal agreement, an issue that has been ongoing for the past two years, the Audit Office also found that last year security guards were not covered by a valid licence. Neither did they produce any training certificates.

The problems flagged being within high risk area of operations

Security arrangements at the country’s only mental health hospital have made headlines in recent years. In the most recent report on the hospital’s operations, tabled in Parliament in July, the Auditor General noted that these were “largely inadequate” and security staff members were often lax and not carrying out all their duties.

There have been reports of patients escaping and the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has long insisted the “dilapidated” hospital needed attention.

Architects last year declared some of the wards unsafe and ordered that patients be moved elsewhere. At the time, Health Minister Chris Fearne told Times of Malta the hospital was in the safest state in 30 years.