The Malta Independent 6 July 2025, Sunday
View E-Paper

Proposed Utility tariff revision: Muscat warns government to “back off”

Malta Independent Monday, 6 October 2008, 00:00 Last update: about 18 years ago

David Lindsay

Malta Labour Party leader Joseph Muscat yesterday warned the government to “back off” from its proposals to revise water and electricity tariffs, as the new rates being proposed would create economic turmoil for the country, its economy and its families.

Dr Muscat vowed the MLP was ready to respond to the people’s call to lead them in opposition against the new tariffs as proposed by the government, Dr Muscat told a party function in Ghaxaq yesterday morning.

If the government carries on in this vein, Dr Muscat warned, the MLP would be ready to take all necessary measures to defend the people and the country’s constituted bodies, who are clearly set against the move.

The government’s proposals for removing the surcharge levied on electricity bills in favour of a steep upward revision in tariff rates was met with widespread condemnation when unveiled last week. All of Malta social partners, worker and employer representative bodies alike, took a practically unprecedented step in rallying together against the new proposed tariffs.

The industry and tourism sectors have warned the move would lead to thousands of job cuts, the closing of factories and hotels and the possibility of foreign direct investors pulling out of the country, with manufacturing firms looking at individual cost increases of anywhere between €1.5 million and €10 million per year.

Describing last week’s proposals as a “huge shock”, Dr Muscat yesterday accused Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi of hypocrisy in that when announcing Budget 2008, he had said the government would be able to remove the surcharge but that such a move would be tantamount to taking the people for a ride. Now, just under a year later, the government was doing just that, Dr Muscat said.

A serious government, he said, would do things a different way.

While the governments of other countries were figuring out ways to lighten the burden of today’s steep oil prices on businesses and consumers, Dr Muscat accused the government of not only failing to mitigate against the present crisis but of actually creating a whole new crisis.

While in the lead-up to the 8 March general election the people had been presented with the GonziPN proposition, Dr Muscat said, the country had now ended up with AustinPN - a reference to Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt, who has spearheaded the tariff revision proposals and who, Dr Muscat cited, has said that if the government’s proposals are not implemented there would not even be enough money to make good for Enemalta workers’ wages.

Also in the run up to the last general election, Dr Muscat recalled, the government had stressed how the country’s finances had been on a sound footing, and that with Enemalta now apparently in a fiscal hole, he questioned who had been responsible for the running of Enemalta for the last 20 years.

Dr Muscat accused the government of thievery in that it was looking to take money from families’ pockets to subsidise its own failures.

The MLP, Dr Muscat said, was not there to merely criticise, but rather to advise on how things could be done better. The country, he said, was in need of new ideas.

Turning to the ongoing investigations on the hacking of MITTS’ computer systems, in which he said confidential information such as VAT and income tax details of private citizens had, in addition to email accounts, possibly been compromised, Dr Muscat accused the minister responsible, Austin Gatt, of prejudicing the investigations from the outset by labelling the accusations a “pack of lies”.

Private citizens, he said, deserved and needed guarantees that they were not being spied upon, while allegations that emails of leading Labour MPs had also been hacked needed to be clarified as such actions, he said, could “undermine the country’s parliamentary democracy” and the people’s faith in its institutions.

Any residual feelings of bitterness from the party’s recent leadership contest were also set aside yesterday, with former fellow leadership contender Michael Falzon, now the MLP’s spokesperson for home affairs and security, accompanying Dr Muscat and delivering yesterday’s opening address.

Dr Falzon chose the EU’s immigration pact for his speaking point, stressing the while the party was by no means racist of xenophobic and that while it was well aware of the country’s international obligations, Malta’s particular circumstances needed to be addressed in any discussion on immigration.

Nor was the party against the concept of burden sharing, far from it. What the party was against, he said, was the mere lip service being paid to Malta’s plea for burden sharing by the concept simply being referred to on paper.

Dr Falzon said the party welcomed the fact that the concept of burden sharing was, for the first time, to be mentioned in an official EU document, if approved by EU leaders at an informal EU summit later this month – but what was needed was real burden sharing and not a mere reference to voluntary burden sharing.

The MLP, he said, was close to the people and as such was conscious of certain difficulties the country faced through the migration phenomenon – such as the islands’ geographical realities and the phenomenon’s impact on the country’s high population density and its small size.

  • don't miss