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Karl Schembri
A Board member of the Foundation for Medical Services and a consultant for the same foundation entrusted with the management of the ongoing construction of Mater Dei Hospital are being paid separately by the government to negotiate an opening date and revised fees with the foreign building contractor, Skanska.
Labour Leader Alfred Sant revealed a letter sent by Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech to the Prime Minister last July in which he asks for Gonzi’s approval to pay consultants working for the negotiating team.
Architect Paul Camilleri, a board member of FMS, is being paid an additional Lm43 per hour to work on negotiations, while Jacqueline Camilleri, consultant to FMS, is charging Lm20 per hour as a negotiating team member.
A legal team from Mamo TCV headed by Dr Richard Camilleri is receiving Lm45 per hour while a PricewaterhouseCoopers team headed by Michel Ganado is receiving Lm32 per hour.
A British senior civil engineer, John Barr, is being paid Stg500 daily for his consultancy, Stg300 on travel days and Lm550 a month for accommodation, subsistence and car hire.
Sant also produced a letter sent by Fenech to the Director General of Contracts on 6 August asking him to confirm that the rates charged were reasonable.
“From experience and through comparisons with comparative rates we find that the above rates quoted to us are reasonable and we would appreciate your confirmation of our opinion in this respect,” Fenech wrote.
Director General Joseph Spiteri had confirmed his approval but added that he was doing so “on the clear understanding that the assignment involved will be of a short-term nature and in no way an open-ended one.”
Addressing a press conference yesterday, Sant condemned the government for engaging consultants to negotiate with Skanska when they were responsible for “the mess” at the Tal-Qroqq hospital site in the first place.
“I’m very angry about this… this is unacceptable,” Sant said, with Fenech’s letters in hand. “These people are now being paid extra to clean up the mess they created. In two hours Paul Camilleri is being paid what a worker on the minimum wage receives for a whole week’s work.
“These are people who have created chaos in the Mater Dei project, and now the government pays them directly to see how contractors’ fees can be cut and negotiate an opening date for the hospital, a year after the first hospital services should have already been offered.”
Referring to the Director of Contract’s reply about the “reasonableness” of the contractors’ rates, Sant said: “This is a total whitewash. He took the cue from Fenech and said he approved... How come government didn’t use its own Management Efficiency Unit to review this project? All this reminds me of the Dar Malta scandal.”
Sant said that once again, just like with the Brussels property acquisition, government was handing hefty contracts to the “friends of friends network” when government finances were totally out of control.
He added that a migration plan to move the hospital from St Luke’s to Tal-Qroqq cost the government Lm200,000 but now it is “totally outdated.”
Contacted yesterday, Fenech who until recently was employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, defended the decision to engage the consultants to help him, as head of the negotiating team, so as to reach the best decisions when dealing with Skanska.
“I’ve been here for six months and I need these consultants… they’re experts in their fields and they are charging normal rates when you compare them to other professionals,” Fenech said. “Everything is above board.”
He said Paul Camilleri was “only paid an honorarium” as a member of FMS while Jacqueline Camilleri worked for FMS on a part-time basis.
However, asked about Sant’s claim that they were the same people who were responsible for “the mess” the Mater Dei hospital project was in, Fenech said that was an unfair statement as the current state of the project had developed under three different governments along the years.
Since works on the Mater Dei hospital started back in 1993, government has spent Lm114 million on what is turning out to be a turn-of-the-century white elephant. The government has still not decided on a definitive opening date with the contractor and it is also in disagreement with Skanska about construction fees which spiralled over a decade.
Asked whether he could justify such hefty consultation fees when the government was trying to negotiate lower fees with the contractor, Fenech said: “When you consider all the millions involved in this project, these fees are very reasonable… if to save Lm10 I have to spend Lm1, then it is reasonable.”
Meanwhile in a media statement sent yesterday evening the government replied to Alfred Sant’s accusations and said the attacks on Paul Camilleri and Jacqueline Camilleri were superfluous and unwarranted. The government said Paul Camilleri was an important bridge between the FMS and Skanska and that Jacqueline Camilleri was responsible for essential costing analysis for the project.
The government asked why Sant was making the revelations at such a sensitive stage of the negotiations, and pointed out that he had often engaged consultants when Prime Minister.
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