Health authorities spend €2,500 a day to rent a private ambulance service, Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Chris Fearne told parliament on Tuesday.
Fearne said that Mater Dei Hospital is paying a private ambulance service, which includes two ambulance respondents with each ambulance, to ensure it can provide an efficient ambulance service.
“This costs around €2,500 a day, equivalent to three ambulances and six ambulance respondents daily,” he said.
Fearne said the new ambulance contract is based on a leasing contract, which costs €1,705,500 per year and covers the cost of 11 ambulances on the road.
He was replying to a parliamentary question asked by Opposition MP Charles Azzopardi.
Fearne said the contract was awarded following a competitive process and the ambulances are designed specifically for the needs of the Maltese Health Service.
He said the contractor may be liable for any negligence on his part which is not resolved in a short period of time.
“These ambulances were gradually introduced to the emergency service, and part of the implementation includes extensive training to ambulance respondents and nurses for them to be able to use all the ambulance equipment."
Back in December, Fearne had announced the introduction of a new fleet of ambulances to be used by Mater Dei’s emergency department.
He said the new ambulances were “custom-made” for Malta and that they are now “like mobile ITUs”.
Fearne had said around 100 calls for ambulances are received every day, amounting to more than 40,000 in a year.
The new fleet was introduced a year after ambulance drivers raised their concerns about the working conditions and lack of investment in new vehicles.
At the time, the workers and drivers claimed that ambulances being rented from Emergency Malta lacked a full equipment rack, with drivers scrambling to find missing parts from government-owned ambulances.
They were informed the old vehicles would be removed and new ones leased, but this also got them questioning why the vehicles were to be leased.
In 2020, Mater Dei Hospital's chief operating officer Steve Agius blamed the need for hiring private ambulances on an industrial dispute with union UĦM -Voice of the Workers.
The union on the other hand disagreed with Agius and said the government wanted to shift the blame for the situation onto it, saying the government refused to negotiate a new collective agreement for Emergency Ambulance Responders, all while spending "thousands" to hire private ambulances.