Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1269236
5 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 15 JULY 2020 NEWS SALES EXECUTIVES FULL-TIME / PART-TIME CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 A government spokesperson confirmed today that Robert Abela's office had locat- ed the document first denied to The Times of Malta in a freedom of information re- quest to Malta Enterprise, at the OPM. A court of law had upheld ME's refusal to disclose the MOU, signed before any ex- pression of interest for the privatisation of Malta's hospitals took place. The document pertaining to the deal reached by the government with Vitals for the transfer of three private hospitals, was claimed to be missing by the Muscat administration when the National Audit Office launched an investigation into the tendering process. "After the report was published, I imme- diately ordered that the document needed to be found... my position is clear, I have given them a deadline of today to find the missing document," Robert Abela said on Monday. MaltaToday understands that the MOU, signed by Malta Enterprise with Vitals' proponents well before they formally ten- dered for the hospitals' concession, could have been inside the Office of the Prime Minister all along. Last week a damming report was pub- lished by the National Audits Office (NAO) found collusion between Vitals Global Healthcare and the government on the hospital deal. The NAO said that the multi-million euro deal to transfer three state hospitals to an obscure private com- pany was "predetermined." Previously the government had assumed responsibility for the report by sacking the former Health Minister Konrad Miz- zi. Mizzi was expelled from the Labour parliamentary group in a vote backed by 99% of the party's executive, after being implicated in a scandal where state utility Enemalta was said to have paid an over-in- flated price for a Montenegrin wind farm. Vitals MOU recovered at Office of the Prime Minister MALTESE libraries recorded an increase in book loans of 2.3% when compared to last year,1.3% of which were in e-books form. 1,045,869 books were loaned throughout the year from dif- ferent public libraries in Malta, after they increased their stock with 47,754 books. Malta Li- braries recorded an increase in both book donations and book purchases in comparison to last year. E-books loans recorded a large increase for two consecu- tive years after being introduced in April 2016. Despite these increases, the number of new members re- corded fell by 3.1%. The majority of the new members were under the age of 18 years. The largest increase in book loans was reg- istered in the public libraries located in the South Eastern district (14.3%) with the one in Qrendi enrolling the high- est increase. On the other hand the largest decrease was in the Northern district with Mosta re- cording the highest drop. While the expenditure on printed book material and peri- odicals remained the same, both imports and exports of these de- clined in 2019. The number of books and periodicals received by the National Library of Mal- ta under legal deposit reached 1,579, a decrease of 9.3 per cent when compared to 2018. Library lending on the increase