ARMS has confirmed what the Nationalist Party revealed yesterday: that a technical failure in its system resulted in thousands of bills being affected, with the consequence that thousands of people lost the Eco-reduction, the PN said Saturday.

In its statement responding to the PN's press conference, ARMS also confirmed that despite attempting to rectify many of the affected bills once it became aware of the issue, there are still thousands of bills that remain affected to this day - without consumers having realised it - two years after this technical failure occurred.

In the face of this scandal, Minister Miriam Dalli has once again disappeared, as she does whenever a crisis arises within an entity that falls under her responsibility.

Since ARMS is confirming the facts and claiming that it did not hide this situation from consumers, the PN said Minister Miriam Dalli must answer the following questions:

When and how were consumers informed about this failure over the past two years?

How many consumer bills were originally affected by this failure?

How many consumer bills are still affected today?

When did the Minister become aware of this error, and what decision did she take?

What will be done regarding bills that have already been paid by consumers who were losing the Eco-reduction?

What will she do to address the abuses and incompetence that are prevailing within ARMS?

Instead of running away and going into hiding, and shifting all responsibility onto ARMS - which falls under her remit - the Minister should at the very least have the decency to answer these questions that people are rightly asking, the PN said.

In reply, the Labour Party said the PN "kept lying in its statement this morning where it said that mistakes from ARMS cost thousands of people their eco-contribution benefits. This is false."

Nowhere did ARMS say this, as the Nationalist Party claims. ARMS said that when there was a change in the system, during which a very small percentage of its consumers were affected, actions were taken immediately to resolve the system, and if there is still any difficulty in individual cases, these consumers should contact ARMS directly and their issue will be resolved, the PL said.

With the Nationalist Party in Government, it wouldn't just be isolated cases like these, but high bills for all Maltese and Gozitan families and businesses. When the Nationalist Party asks where Minister Miriam Dalli is, the answer is clear; together with the Government, she is working to continue fulfilling the promise of stable prices and the lowest energy prices, as well as a number of other reforms that are bringing positive change to our country, including in the energy sector itself and that of open spaces, among others.

Successfully implemented changes by the Government prompt the Nationalist Party to increase its desperate attacks. In fact, just as the PN is doing this morning with Minister Dalli, from time to time it does the same with other Ministers, only for time to show that the Nationalist Party has continuously built these campaigns on lies and exaggerations, the PL said.