When Dalli does things like this even when he has been in so much trouble and is under such scrutiny, you have to say that it is no longer plain greed but a sick compulsion. And the prime minister is madly irresponsible, his hostage, embroiled in corruption, or all three, to let this happen.

Published: November 28, 2013 at 1:18am

tender

Times of Malta reports that the government has ditched its Eur25 million tender for a fully integrated IT system at the general hospital in favour of “building a new one internally”.

The newspaper said this evening:

Sources close to Mater Dei yesterday told Times of Malta that the Patient Administration System – considered to be the backbone of the hospital’s IT system since 1997 – has been taken over by the new review team headed by former EU commissioner John Dalli.

It is being redesigned by a new consultant employed directly by Mr Dalli through the Health Ministry. According to the sources, this is being done without the Mater Dei IT department’s approval.

It was only a matter of time before we began to discover the opportunities which the voluntary charity workers, John Dalli and his helpmeet daughter Louisa, had found for possible compensation.

Quite frankly, the prime minister was nuts to put him there knowing that he would do this. Either nuts or in league with him, or his hostage because Dalli knows something.

Dalli appears unable to touch an official role without finding business opportunities for himself. Isn’t that what the last couple of scandals were all about, really?

I’m beginning to think that the man is sick and can’t help himself.

And we seem to have landed ourselves with the most criminally irresponsible prime minister since Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.




47 Comments Comment

  1. Dave says:

    “It is being redesigned by a new consultant employed directly by Mr Dalli through the Health Ministry.” yet he is neither employed by the ministry nor did it engage or pay him to draw up the report.

    Ladies & gents we are in the presence of Emperor Muscat supported by General Dalli and Colonel Mallia.

  2. ken il malti says:

    John Dalli will never get caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

    He is the perfect partner- in- crime for Joey Muscat.

  3. Qeghdin Sew says:

    Is the consultant Bahamian, by any chance?

    • observer says:

      Even one ‘multi-national’ female would probably do – as she certainly did in collecting funds for African charities.

  4. Rahal says:

    It was such a near miss for Dalli in the PN leadership race of 2004. That was the end of his political ambitions. His focus turned to financial ones from then on.

  5. Natalie Mallett says:

    How can anyone take notice of this report when its author was certified with psychiatric problems so bad that he couldn’t get on a plane, less than a year ago?

    Has anyone ever heard of a nurse or hospital worker trying to get himself a 60 million dollar bribe?

    I am a nurse.

  6. George Grech says:

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130315/local/New-minister-wants-to-visit-every-factory.461574#.UpbaBH-9KSM

    Isn’t it time to visit Arrow Pharma and let the workers there know what he is doing to save their jobs ?

  7. Bubu says:

    When I read about the press conference in which Dalli wiped the floor with minister Farrugia’s face, I knew exactly this would happen. This is only the beginning. Mark my words.

  8. Arturo Mercieca says:

    isn’t John Dalli’s appointment in breach of the Constitution?

    Section 110. (1) of the Constitution states that “Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, power to make appointments to public offices and to remove and to exercise disciplinary control over persons holding or acting in any such offices shall vest in the Prime Minister, acting on the recommendation of the Public Service Commission.” The P.S.C. has not given any recommendation as to his appointment and thus, John Dalli should not exercise executive authority in Mater Dei.

  9. curious says:

    Dr. Farrugia, please get out of there. Go back to being a family doctor. You will be happier.

    You are going to end up being lumped with the failure of the health system as we know it while others will laugh at your expense.

    • observer says:

      But you yourself, Farrugia, will shed bitter tears – not of remorse, mind you, but of utter shame.

      • albona says:

        You are up against wolves. You and your girlfriend should head for the nearest exit. This is not a place for people with scruples.

  10. Is-Serkin says:

    Going back to Dalli’s first ministerial appointment in 1987, we had the now-forgotten AIMS scandal. Following that, every time Dalli was appointed to a ministerial role, disaster or accusations of corruption followed.

    All this with the final cherry on the cake – the snus affair at the European Commission – and yet Joseph Muscat goes ahead and appoints him to pilot reforms at Malta’s general hospital, with all the problems that are now emerging.

    Pretty obvious that Joseph Muscat wanted to insult the PN and Barroso.

    • Gaetano Pace says:

      Careful. Let us not fall into their traps and snares.

      An accountant can in no way be conversant with the specialised management of a hospital. From what could be seen when it comes to the inventory, all that was needed were adjustments which on verification could be done to the “books”.

      NO OFFICIAL SERIOUS ABUSE was indicated.

      Had this been the case the police would have been called in to investigate.

      If there had been the “criminal” abuse, neglect, imprudence and non observance of the laws as is being alleged why were no criminal actions instituted? Why all this fuss then? Could it be a storm in a teacup, Joe`s style, to bestow favours where required?

    • La Redoute says:

      The final cherry on the cake was the trip to the Bahamas. Business there involved billions. Isn’t that what Dalli himself said, ironically, at the press conference he called in his own office to clear his name?

    • Niku says:

      Maybe the prime minister doesn’t know that John Dalli is thought to be corrupt. The poor thing didn’t know that Shiv Nair is blacklisted by the World Bank.

  11. Bronka says:

    There’s a high probability that the consultant is none other than Dr. John Abela, another member of the John Dalli secret team.

  12. Joe Micallef says:

    Who’s this IT consultant? Larry Page?

    Anyone who has been involved in a small to medium sized IT systems project, knows the complexities involved. The complexities of a “Patient Administration System” must be never ending.

    Welcome back to the age of mediocrity.

    • Sandman says:

      According to this ToM report http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131123/local/health.495915#.UpbwncSfg6I it’s Mark Sammut.

      If it’s the same guy, seems like he owns a small-time two-man IT setup called Cursor, apparently doing software for retail outlets.

      His connection with Dalli goes back a long time, and they may actually have had some business together.

      A few weeks ago, the Health Dept issued an RFQ with “extended limits” (tenders of this value are usually RFPs), with very limited specifications and unusually short time frame, for the new IT system for government medicines stock control. The cheapest bidders were MAL Systems. One guess who owns this company.

      • La Redoute says:

        You mean MALL Systems, owned by Cursor Ltd, owned by Mark Sammut of 42/44 Gorg Borg Olivier Street, Rabat?

  13. Felix says:

    I am only concerned about one thing now. How do we get rid of all this scum?

    • La Redoute says:

      Drown the switchers.

    • albona says:

      If it were a five-seat majority I would say that in year three of the mandate some MP’s would start getting complaints from constituents (think unemployment, un-granted favours etc) and would therefore take a stand, but nine is just too many to hope for a dissolution of parliament. The best chance would actually be a disaster for Malta – a bailout and mass protests. I think we can see out the five years.

      • just me says:

        The PL have a majority of 9 seats but 5 Labour MP’s taking a stand and voting against would cause a dissolution of parlament.

  14. anthony says:

    The writing was on the wall.

    Starting with IT. Then procurement of equipment, medicinals, laundry, meals, cleaning, security. You name it.

    To the tune of several hundreds of millions per year. Around a quarter of a billion in total.

    The toad’s half a million pale into insignificance

    The report is just chaff for the gullible, naïve media

    The public and, even more so, the poor patient do not come into it at all.

    • Bubu says:

      Exactly. All you have to do is read what was said during the press conference.

      I can imagine only too well the chaos that will be caused by this Mark Sammut. Honestly, if this guy’s only experience is in Point of Sale systems he is way over his head if he thinks he will cope with a full hospital management system.

      Any sixth former doing his a-level project can come up with a POS, and frequently they do. I myself on occasion had to do that kind of work and that’s considered boilerplate, bread and butter basic stuff. A basic generic POS you can nowadays whip up in a few weeks (if that) working alone using off the shelf, open source components with very little capital investment.

      A customised hospital management system is in a different league altogether. The requirements gathering alone has to be done by specialists and has to be extremely thorough.

      In general, the consultant(s) carrying out the requirements gathering need to have prior experience in the domain they are auditing, especially in such a specialised field such as hospital management because very often people, for various reasons, will be reluctant to discuss their day-to-day tasks which may need to be subsumed into the new system.

      Very often in legacy systems where the bulk of the work is manual, there are processes which everybody takes for granted, but nobody knows who does what task and a consultant who needs to make sense of the mess has to already have a pretty good idea of what goes on in other similar systems, otherwise he will miss vital processes, resulting in a deeply flawed end-product.

      Then there is the actual system design, software, IT infrastructure, procurement of the actual hardware, maintenance agreements, SLAs and who knows what else. There is no way in hell that this one man band doing POSs can cope with this project without having analysts experienced in the field.

      Of course, none of this matters as long as the right pockets get lined and the scapegoat is there, ready to take the fallout.

      • Jozef says:

        Oh but he’ll manage, it will be Muscat’s way of introducing payment for services at Mater Dei.

        T’wasn’t me, Dalli’s idea. Majtezwel keep it.

  15. pazzo says:

    Kif dejjem kienu jghidu n-nanniet ‘miskin il-marid’.

  16. DeepThroat says:

    The consultant is Mark Sammut, owner of Cursor Ltd and Mall Systems Ltd.

    They are mainly involved in POS systems and car park systems. Yesterday they were the cheapest offer for a tender to install an IT system in the new pharmaceutical stores (call for Stock Control System at CPSU storage Premises).

    The likes of Exigy-Microsoft, Philip Toledo – IBM were heavily out-priced by a two-bit company called Mall systems Ltd. Now Mark Sammut is probably the one who designed the tender in the first place, and must have been aware of all the requirements.

    It is now obvious that the consultant Dalli has a team made up of Sammut and Horwath man, the accountant John Abela. They aim to take all the IT contracts and other consultancy contracts at Mater Dei Hospital. No doubt about that.

    It’s payback time for St Dalli (who only last year was a psychiatric patient unable to travel to answer the police commissioner’s questions), years after he tried his best to take the same contract by hiding behind INSO and an Austrian company in 2003.

    He didn’t succeed then because one of his people was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

    He will succeed now by foisting on Mater Dei Hospital a system written by one man and his dog. Why is no one asking questions about this Sammut, who has one of those supermarket doctorates from some obscure university?

    When all systems fail, literally, it will be the minister holding the can, and the prime minister’s consultant holding the cash.

  17. Natalie Mallett says:

    It is so like John Dalli to brush off this outcry by saying that it is natural to scream ouch when a wound is poked. What is not natural Mr. Dalii is for an incompetent imposter to do wound care when there are specialised wound care nurses to do the job.

    What’s the point in blaming the nurses and hospital workers when in fact the blame is on you and the ones who put you in that position.

    Why don’t you just EFF off with your Swan friend to the Bahamas.

  18. SPAM! says:

    Does Mark Sammut live in Rabat? If so, then John Dalli is often seen entering and leaving his home.

  19. Nana says:

    Mark Sammut lives in Rabat and his house is up for sale for a large sum of money. Dalli is a very close friend of his and Sammut invites him round quite often. We people in Rabat see the comings and goings.

  20. albona says:

    Dalli must have so much dirt on the PM and many others in the PL that no one would dare touch him. Dalli knows his opponents. He knows that the only people who can hurt hum are outside of Malta, Kessler and Barroso being most prominent amongst these. Until 2018 he has the protection of the socialists he so helped to power.

    Don’t be at all surprised if when this 5 year charade comes to an end Dalli ends up in political exile somewhere – in St Kitts perhaps?

    If it’s the Monday after the election, it must be the Caribbean.

  21. Gaetano Pace says:

    It’s time for Dun Gorg Dalli to hold another mass of thanksgiving.

  22. C says:

    Skuzani se nkun pastas… l-ewwel hexa lill-Partit Nazzjonalista ta’ Lawrence Gonzi u issa se jahxi lill-Partit Laburista ta’ Joseph Muscat.

    Mhux tajjeb hekk? Vendetta talli qatt ma sar u qatt m’hu se jsir Prim Ministru ta’ Malta.

  23. Joseph Ellul-Grech says:

    This is a case of fat cats and their bum boys getting richer from the public purse. If the health system is in such a state, John Dalli and his associate Mary Swan (AKA Emma Corbin / Nina Petros / Lady Bird etc., an international fraudster) should set up a charity to help finance all the improvements the health system needs.

    Such a charity should be worth billions, just like the one Dalli was setting up in the Bahamas. It should also help reduce the deficit and the national debt.

    A question remains, who is responsible for authorising this €25 million tender to a person who without a doubt will not be able to deliver? Carry on Johnny Cash, the taxpayer will foot the bill.

  24. verita says:

    What authority does Dalli have to give a contract like that to a friend and associate and to cancel the tender process?

    We should be out in the streets protesting. And they made such a story about l-arlogg tal-lira.

  25. Kukkurin says:

    Minister Farrugia not so long ago on taking office shed genuine tears for his patients. Time to make a gracious return to those poor patients and leave ministerial duties to John Dalli.

  26. Robert Barathian says:

    It was reported that one of the solutions put forward by John Dalli which , in his opinion should end once and for all the maladministration at Mater Dei hospital is the recruitment of foreign experts to manage the place. This prompts the question. ANYONE PARTICULAR IN MIND, Mr. Dalli ?

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