Abuse in the procurement and management of cleaning service contracts at Mount Carmel hospital, reported by Times of Malta several weeks ago, have been confirmed through a new audit by the National Audit Office.
The disregard to public procurement rules by the Health Ministry was only discovered by chance, during a separate investigation by the NAO of another contract, for clerical services, which was also found to be grossly irregular.
According to the latest NAO findings, at the moment there is “no formal document covering the mental hospital’s outsourcing of cleaning services” and the contract, worth millions of taxpayer money every year, has been renewed every three months with the blessing of the Contracts Department at the Ministry of Finance, in clear breach of public procurement rules.
The NAO observed “the fact that a service bearing such a considerable financial impact is not adequately covered by an official contract document is an obvious cause for concern”.
“The Office strongly contends that procuring a service for three months with a value of nearly half a million euros through a call for quotations and extending it over a number of years with increasing financial values, poses a considerable governance risk,” the NAO insisted.
“The financial value at which cleaning services at MCH are acquired far exceeds the maximum threshold for a call for quotations (as justified by the Health Ministry) as set by the national public procurement rules.”
Although the NAO did not name the contractor currently providing the service, Times of Malta is informed that during the past years, cleaners at Mount Carmel were provided by WM Environmental Ltd.
The company was chosen directly by Health Minister Chris Fearne’s office through a direct order and kept the multi-million contract in place by temporary renewals by the Finance Ministry every three months.
When the newspaper revealed the state in the administration of contracts at Mount Carmel Hospital last November, a spokeswoman for Mr Fearne had insisted that the cleaning service contract was allocated through a tender.
This now results to be untrue.
The NAO also discovered a similar trend in other contracts administered by the same hospital where the cleaning contract was used to ‘recruit’ additional staff, mostly before the last election.
According to the audit, while the cleaning service provider was supposed to supply the hospital with 79 cleaners, it had suddenly increased the personnel by an extra 44. However, since all the cleaners were not necessary, they were ordered to perform unrelated duties such as the collection of bulky waste, distribution of food to patients, movers and theatre operatives.
Some of the cleaners are not well suited or trained to interact with patients
Also, according to the hospital’s management, some of the ‘cleaners’ were not up to standard.
“MCH’s Chief Nursing Manager highlighted that these deployed personnel were not conversant with certain cleaning principles, which are pivotal in a hospital environment, such as complete disinfection of certain areas.”
“Some of the deployed cleaners are not well suited or trained to interact with mental health patients,” the NAO was told.
During the audit the NAO also found the approval of a discrepancy of €2.3 million approved to be paid to the cleaning service contractor.
When enquired, the MCH management replied that this was “a calculation error during the approval process”.
Abuse in cleaning contracts dished out by the government have been in the news for the past months.
In an identical case, St Vincent De Paul – the government’s long-term residence for the elderly – has paid over €9 million to another cleaning service provider, X-Clean, since 2015, without a tender ever issued. As happened at MCH, the Finance Ministry kept renewing the Naxxar firm’s direct order every six months.
Times of Malta reported that the company, given €9 million in direct payments, has not paid income tax and other taxes for the past eight years, and owes the Inland Revenue over €4 million.