The administrators of St Vincent de Paul residence for the elderly are approving payments of tens of thousands of euros each month for services that were never part of a six-month cleaning contract, such as hairdressing, gardening and engineering.

That contract for the government facility was awarded by direct order in 2015 and is still in force, in breach of public procurement rules, The Sunday Times of Malta can reveal.

Whistleblowers have provided The Sunday Times of Malta with documented evidence showing that X-Clean – a company which is being paid over €300,000 a month despite never competing for a tender – is being paid for much more than for cleaning services.

According to the documents, the administrators of St Vincent the Paul are repeatedly approving paying out thousands a month in extra payments for X-Clean – the company is supplying the residence with hairdressers, bed technicians, gardeners, road cleaners, engineering services, personal secretaries and physiotherapists, among other services.

The sources said that while the claimed services provided by the contractor are not being monitored and audited by the administrators of the facility, the payments are still being approved by the top echelons of the residence’s administration.

Director of Contracts Anthony Cachia confirmed that the department, responsible for public procurement, has only approved “the provisions of cleaning services at St Vincent De Paul” by the selected company.

When pressed to state how X-Clean was selected, by whom, and to explain how a contract which used to cost taxpayers €88,000 a month has suddenly ballooned to over €300,000 a month, Mr Cachia said that these questions should be answered by the facility’s management.

The claimed services provided are not being monitored

When contacted, the CEO of St Vincent De Paul, Josianne Cutajar, refused to reply to any questions on the phone and said that she would reply in writing.

Asked to state how so many services unrelated to cleaning are being paid through this contract despite the declarations of the Director of Contracts, Dr Cutajar insisted that “all hours procured under the contract being referred to were deployed and consequently paid for in line with approved parameters included in such contract after necessary approvals were obtained under general procurement regulations.”

On his part, the Parliamentary Secretary for Active Aging, Anthony Agius Decelis, who is politically responsible for the facility, has been refusing to reply to questions on this subject for the past two months.

X-Clean, owned by Denis Xuereb from Naxxar, was selected to start providing cleaning services at St Vincent De Paul as from April 1, 2015.

According to the Director of Contracts, the company’s selection was made by the administrators of St Vincent de Paul, under the direction of Dr Cutajar, after a call for quotations.

Although the company was meant to provide its services temporarily, until a new tender procedure was published and the bids evaluated, this never happened. Instead, St Vincent De Paul kept issuing repeated direct orders to the same company.

The MFSA companies’ register shows that X-Clean was only registered as a company a day after it started providing services at the government facility.

At the time, the minister politically responsible for St Vincent de Paul was Naxxar doctor Michael Farrugia, who is now Home Affairs Minister.

Asked to state why such a large tender has not been issued for over three years, Mr Cachia said one was now expected next month. According to Mr Cachia, its drafting by SVDP administrators took very long due to “re-planning and re-drafting”.

The St Vincent De Paul and X-Clean arrangement comes at a massive cost to taxpayers. According to the director of contracts, before April 2015 the government was forking out some €1 million a year to cover the cleaning costs of the residence. Since X-Clean took over, the costs have soared to over €3 million a year.

Documents show that while X-Clean is charging the facility €13.38 an hour for every employee it provides, mostly foreigners, the cleaners are being paid less than €6.50 an hour.