In light of the ongoing power cuts, the Nationalist Party has called on Energy Minister Miriam Dalli to resign and leave the energy sector in the hands of competent people instead.

It has been a nightmare of a week for Enemalta, as for four nights in a row multiple power faults were reported across the country.

Nine power faults were reported on Wednesday night and eight were reported on Thursday night.

Enemalta said that the current heat wave affecting all of the Mediterranean is the main cause of the power cuts.  The Met Office is forecasting temperatures to remain above 40 degrees Celsius until at least the middle of next week.

During a press conference the PN’s energy spokesperson Mark Anthony Sammut and infrastructure spokesperson Ryan Callus both condemned the government’s “incompetence and lack of planning” which they say has led to these power cuts.

Sammut began by saying that this is the first time in Malta’s history that it has experienced so many frequent and long power cuts. He also made reference to a news article from ten years ago, which quotes Dalli saying that “power blackouts will be a thing of the past.”

In Triq il-Parilja, Santa Venera, Sammut said that he was informed that this street only got electricity back on Friday morning after it experienced a blackout for almost 34 hours. To make matters worse, Sammut said that this street was not marked on the Enemalta website as experiencing a fault.

During a technical briefing to the media on Thursday, Enemalta CEO Jonathan Cardona told journalists that the current heatwave is to blame for the increase in power cuts as of late. He said also that the highest consumption levels were recorded at 624 megawatts but the grid’s capacity is 830 megawatts.

When mentioning this, Sammut said that the problem does not have to do with generation but the problem has to do with distribution. Sammut noted how although Dalli is saying that the problem is the heat and not the electricity load, in the same breath, she said that people should not use their air-conditioner if it is not needed.

“This is a national crisis,” Sammut said when mentioning examples of people throwing away food, animals dying, or vulnerable people not being able to use medical equipment.

Sammut said that people deserve compensation which they can get by simply filling in a form claiming something they lost, but also said that people even deserve compensation for the inconvenience they are going through.

“The system is not a resilient one… this is not expected from a country like ours; a European country,” Callus began by saying.

Callus mentioned that although millions were spent on Malta’s road infrastructure, that investment is now being destroyed as roads are being dug up to access power cables.

When referring to the justification that the system is failing because of the heat, he reminded people that former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that he wanted to turn Malta into Dubai. Callus said that not only has Malta not become Dubai but we cannot even compare the service of energy that is offered in this country compared to others.

He further slammed Malta’s economic model which focuses on bringing in more people, even though Malta’s infrastructure cannot handle this increase.