The nurses’ strike would spread to the emergency unit at Mater Dei Hospital if demands for better food continued to be ignored, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses warned on Wednesday.
The union on Tuesday directed nurses not to accompany patients into the operating theatre.
“This has been an ongoing saga for a very long time. We didn’t just wake up and decide to disrupt operations so irresponsibly. But nurses are already dealing with very tough work conditions and we will not give up,” union president Paul Pace said.
While operations were disrupted on Tuesday, they took place as usual on Wednesday with Mr Pace laying the blame on strikebreakers.
Nurses were hired from private contractors to fill in the gaps, he said, adding that a number of them were not skilled to do the work they were hired for.
“They brought in strikebreakers today (Wednesday). They hired nurses from private contractors that had never worked at Mater Dei, some of them with no experience with surgical patients,” Mr Pace said.
Mater Dei CEO Ivan Falzon, however, disputed this, claiming he had only subcontracted two nurses on Wednesday and this was according to normal procedures.
Mr Falzon, who believes the...
