The workers of Enemalta and the people of Malta and Gozo are paying for the price of incompetence, lack of planning, and corruption in the energy sector, the Nationalist Party said on Wednesday.
In a press conference addressed by PN MPs Ryan Callus and Joe Giglio, the party said that the government is tired and that the lack of investment is leading to great suffering among the people.
The PN MPs said that like last summer, Malta and Gozo are again experiencing total blackouts, “as unfortunately even the basic is no longer guaranteed under this government due to the lack of investment in the last ten years”.
They continued that it has become normal for many localities to experience several days in darkness. The MPs added that a Nationalist government will assure that the necessary investments would be made immediately in order to make this problem “a thing of the past once and for all”.
Callus and Giglio said a recently published report by the Auditor General highlighted how in the last 10 years no investment was made in by the Labour government in the electricity distribution network.
They said that this crisis has been the result of the shortcomings and incompetence in the leadership of Robert Abela’s government, as well as the lack of direction from Energy Minister Miriam Dalli. It continued that with the Labour Party having been in government for ten years, the PL need to seriously think about how the infrastructure can withstand the increase in Malta’s population which is a result of the government's economic model, built on imported labour.
The PN MPs said that some weeks ago Dalli had assured people that the power outages which occurred last year would not be repeated, but they remarked that last night and this morning many residences were left without electricity.
“Apart from the power cuts, our country is not keeping up with the drainage service, the health service, the traffic, or the cost of living,” the PN said. It continued that in front of this crisis, Malta has a Labour government caught up in internal fights which has not yet realised that it should immediately improve the country’s infrastructure.
Callus and Giglio said that whoever leads the country needs to be more responsible for what people are going through, as the power outages are affecting thousands of families and many workers.
The PN concluded by saying that as it does not want people to relive the “national crisis that they lived through last summer”, as well as the blackouts which have occurred recently. A PN government plans to seriously invest in the distribution of energy, they said.
In reply, the Labour Party said that the only solution the PN had come up with on energy was to privatise the sector and increase tariffs..
The Labour government had invested heavily and will continue to do so to improve the energy network.