Letters | Sunday, 21 June 2009

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Polling day inconvenience at Mater Dei

The magnificent and unquestionable commitment, dedication and devotion to duty of all the caring staff to the patients at the Mater Dei Hospital is beyond exceptional. It’s a credit to their professionalism and a testament to their altruistic duty of care.
For this enduring selfless act we owe them an immense debt of gratitude which can never truly be fully repaid.
However, all this magnificent work is undermined through the paucity of such noble key elements such as duty of care, social responsibility and accountability being applied by the administrators of this hospital, both on site and at ministerial level, to the general public. I refer specifically to the complete and absolute lack of public appraisal (including the incumbent patients) of the virtual shutdown of the hospital to visitors on polling day, Saturday 6 June, and the ensuing unwarranted chaos this caused to prospective visitors on that day.
Apparently, this closure of the hospital to visitors was demanded via a ministry edict. Yet this does not exonerate the hospital’s administrators from taking the appropriate measures to notify the public of this momentous decision. It would be interesting to learn precisely what measures were deployed to promulgate such vital information to the thousands of people who visit the hospital on a daily basis? For it transpired that a severely restricted access to wards for visitors was being granted on that day and that only a very few would be open to receive visitors. As to which wards remained accessible to visitors and how was this essential information conveyed and made known to the public, I could not locate one shred of notification throughout the hospital advising the public of this visitor restriction.
For I and a great many other people were only made aware of this situation upon arrival at the hospital on that fateful day. Despite the hospital still accepting visitors, the car park was inaccessible to those who were allowed entrance; again no indication that the car park would be closed was forthcoming prior to this day.
Notwithstanding, the obscene fact that we do not possess any viable alternative mechanism in place enabling one to cast their vote other than in person at a nominated polling booth, is preposterously archaic and bordering on the barbaric, given that the sick and infirm are subsequently wheeled out of hospitals and old peoples homes to undertake one’s civic duty.
This leads me to ask how the Ministry of Social Policy, and more crucially the Mater Dei Hospital administrators, when precisely was this decision to severely restrict access to visitors on polling day reached? What measures were deployed by the hospital administrators to notify the public? How was the fact that for those visitors still allowed access the hospitals main entrance would be closed? Why was the car park closed? When can we expect to move progressively towards the 21st century and have the provision of voting options made available?

Peter Murray
Mosta

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