Nationalist Party (PN) Spokesperson for the Self-Employed, Small Enterprises and Cooperatives Robert Cutajar has expressed his concerns about the nation-wide power outages and how they are impacting local businesses.

He said that business owners, like other Maltese families, are growing more concerned. "The negative impact caused by this unprecedented situation in our country is creating major problems even in the operation of small and medium businesses. The power cut means a blow in the level of productivity, discarded stock as well as a number of businesses unable to operate in the peak time of their work."

This was confirmed by the Maltese Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as the Malta Employers' Association (MEA), he said.

In his statement, Cutajar criticised the Labour Government's lack of a "serious long-term vision in the field of energy", and said that the Nationalist Party is calling on the Government to act immediately to remedy the difficulties being faced by business owners through proper compensation. He added; "It is now becoming clear that this situation of national crisis was created by the Government itself, also due to a lack of investment in the energy sector." and said that the permanent solutions which would guarantee that these situations would not happen again can only be provided by the Nationalist Party.

Cutajar concluded by saying that the internal problems of the Labour Government are resulting in a lack of leadership of Malta and negatively impacting the lives of the Maltese and Gozitan people.