The government is using “lies” about bad concrete as a way to convince people at Cospicua Home for the Elderly to leave, PN leader Bernard Grech said on Sunday.
Speaking on Net TV, Grech said the government had decided to demolish and rebuild the care home to make it larger so whoever took control of it made bigger profits.
“They are telling us that the concrete is not even fit for a pavement, that’s what the minister said at first, and then we started uncovering the lies,” Grech said.
Residents of the care home complained over the past weeks about being told to move to other homes after the government announced plans to partly demolish and rebuild the home that houses 128 elderly people.
But Grech said that a government report valid till January next year established that the home was up to standard. The report, he said, was tabled in parliament by the government itself.
“While a report is certifying that everything is in order, the minister is saying that the concrete is of poor quality” he said.
The government had even tried to lay the blame at the Nationalist Party’s feet and yet it was a Labour government that built the home between 1996 and 1998, Grech said.
“If the concrete is poor you (PL) should answer for it,” the PN leader said. “But we are not interested in these games,” he added.
The elderly deserve to be treated better and with dignity, he said.
In an interview with Times of Malta earlier this month, active ageing minister Jo Etienne Abela said the government needed to rebuild parts of Cospicua Home because of faulty construction methods and poor quality concrete.
“There is so much wrong that went into the building of this care home that I wouldn’t know where to start,” he said.
A few days later Abela tabled a number of reports in parliament that showed the dire condition of sections of the building as well as the state of disrepair of critical systems that are required to keep the home in good functioning order.
A separate report found that the state of the concrete of a number of balconies was not up to par, with sections crumbling due to a lack of reinforcement. “Basically, where large pieces of the concrete fell off it was because there was no reinforcement steel to hold it in place,” a report said.
The minister said the home would be demolished and rebuilt to the same size if a Planning Authority application was approved.
Once rebuilt, the building will continue serving as a home for the elderly.