FORMER HEALTH Minister Stavros Malas yesterday confirmed that he wrote off medical fees worth over €7,000 for the former Syrian ambassador at the request of President Demetris Christofias.
Daily Phileleftheros reported yesterday that the Syrian diplomat failed to pay medical debts worth €7,373 in total, after receiving treatment on three different occasions at the Nicosia General Hospital while serving as Syrian ambassador to Cyprus.
According to the paper, Nicosia hospital wrote to the ambassador on October 10, 2010 seeking payment for two unpaid bills dating back to November 11 and December 3 of 2009 for a total sum of €6,337.
The Syrian diplomat also underwent treatment at the hospital on October 7, 2010, costing a further €1,036. None of the three bills were paid by the diplomat.
On December 6, 2011- two years after the diplomat’s initial treatment, the hospital letter ended up on the desk of Malas, who was serving as health minister at the time. The next day, reported Phileleftheros, Malas gave instructions to his permanent secretary to write off the debts, explaining that Christofias had assured the diplomat the debt would be erased in the public interest.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail, Malas said: “The president had given his personal pledge to the Syrian diplomat to write off the debt. It is at the minister’s discretion to write off medical bills, and given the president’s commitment, I chose to write off his debts. He was not even working on the island anymore. He had already left the country.”
Asked what criteria need to be fulfilled for someone to receive preferential treatment in not paying medical bills owed to the state, the AKEL-backed presidential candidate said: “I did the same for hundreds of citizens who were unable to pay their debts. I helped a lot of people while I was minister to write off their debts.”
Malas explained that there were three categories with regards to payment of medical bills. Category A included people living under a certain low income and civil servants entitled to free health care. Category B covered families with two children earning in total between €33,000 and €40,000 who were entitled to lower fees. The third category was people earning above that threshold who were not eligible for concessions.
In any case, noted Malas, the troika had now abolished Category B and all exemptions for access to free public health care that are not based on income criteria except for persons suffering from certain chronic diseases depending on illness severity, while leaving the current income threshold for beneficiaries of Category ‘A’ unchanged.
Asked whether the Syrian diplomat faced financial difficulties at the time, the presidential candidate replied: “It’s not necessarily about income, sometimes there are other issues at play.”
