The new utility bill system which determines how the Automated Revenue Management Services (ARMS) calculates people’s water and electricity bills was this week – after many weeks and months of promises – announced by the government.

The ARMS overcharging saga has been going on for years.  The Malta Independent had covered it at length as far back as 2017 – now five years ago – and it was also the subject of a report by the National Audit Office in the meantime.

Everything confirmed that there was an issue and that people were being overcharged, but the government dragged its feet until the courts finally set a precedent on the matter and agreed with two consumers that they had in fact been overcharged.

That was last July – it took another three months for the government to revise the billing issue and to answer to calls for all those consumers affected by the overcharging be refunded.

The new utility bill system will see 80% of ARMS consumers actually receive a refund – but the highest this refund can be is going to be in a year is €8.  Yes, indeed: €8.  It reads like a poor effort at a joke.

It needs to be remembered here that the National Audit Office had, at the end of 2021, found that a significant number of accounts which were analysed had discrepancies which meant that consumers across the board had been overcharged by €4.6 million because of the way ARMS was calculated electricity bills.

The NAO report reads: “The NAO’s analysis shows that 46% of the total analysed accounts (39 out of 85 accounts) did not reveal any significant variance between the current pro rata and annualised billing methodology that is, the difference between the two calculations was less than €2. Nonetheless, 32 out of the 85 electricity accounts reviewed registered a difference between the current pro rata and annualised billing methodology of more than €10. The range of this difference was between €10.74 and €468.90. The latter amount relates to a domestic account with heavy consumption. 78% (25 out of 32) of these variances relate to the category between €10 and €50.”

What this means is that a significant chunk of people were overcharged by more than €10 – and that some had even been overcharged by hundreds of euros.  And yet, all they will be getting as a refund is €8.

It appears that if consumers do want to be adequately refunded, they will have to go through the rigmarole of taking the matter to court.  It took the two people who won the first case and set the precedent five years to see an end to their legal battle. 

Are we to expect that anyone who wants a full refund from being overcharged by a government who for years knew of the problem and refused to fix it has to go through that process to get what is rightfully theirs?

In any good-willed country that shouldn’t be the case.  But it appears that this is what people have to do to get back what is rightfully theirs.

If someone has been overcharged by €10, they should be given back those €10 in full – likewise, if someone was overcharged by €100, they should be given back those €100 in full.

Offering a maximum of €8 as a refund after years of this problem existing is nothing short of a bad joke.