Malta is once again experiencing a sense of déjà vu. We thought we would never face the miserable prolonged power cuts we experienced last year but, over the past week, thousands of households were again left without power, disrupting plans, damaging appliances and exacerbating the impact of the heat wave.

One year on, Enemalta is again unable to guarantee consistency in an essential public service paid for by taxpayers.

Energy Minister Miriam Dalli had said that the grid upgrades worth €55 million would make extensive power cuts a thing of the past. Last month, she told Times of Malta that “the works carried out in the past few months... are leading us to not experience power cuts that we experienced last year”.

Reality has caught up with the illusion of stability in power distribution that the government and Enemalta tried to sell to an increasingly frustrated public.

Enemalta’s executive chair, Ryan Fava, says that a temporary power station to help prevent more power cuts is set to be fully operational by mid-August. Portable generators are also being used in what Fava describes as Plan B.

It is no wonder that tempers are flaring as people cannot be guaranteed a stable supply of electricity.

According to the National Audit Office, Enemalta spent less money on upgrading its distribution grid last year than it had a decade earlier, despite its infrastructure having to cater for a significantly larger and more power-hungry population. Between 2014 and 2023, Enemalta only spent around two-thirds of the money allocated to it to improve these networks.

Rather than acknowledge its failures in the last decade to guarantee a consistent power supply to residents, Enemalta blames natural and uncontrollable causes for the frequent power cuts. It also described the NAO report as “an opinion”.

In the last year, residents in most localities lived with constant disruption as streets were dug up to lay new electricity cables. Enemalta says it laid and connected 80km of cable, and the process is ongoing after the government injected millions of euros more into the project. With Enemalta’s best efforts, no amount of work in one year could remedy the crumbling infrastructure that suffered from a decade of neglect.

Prime Minister Robert Abela must explain to the public what he intends to do to reduce pressures on the physical infrastructure that has reached breaking point due to the unplanned population growth in the last decade.

Only Abela can put a stop to unbridled construction projects that are putting unbearable strain on the infrastructure.

The prime minister promised to make changes to ensure that ordinary people’s concerns were dealt with in the aftermath of the last European Parliament elections. The effects of overpopulation, overtourism, unreliable public services like electricity supply and excessive construction are just a few of the top priorities that must be urgently tackled. The buck ultimately stops with Abela.

People are right to be angry. Why should their taxes continue being plundered to create jobs for the boys and wasted on vanity projects, while essential services like power supply and health emergency services are left to rot away?

People expect more than the flimsy excuses of the government and Enemalta for the frequent power cuts and want guarantees. People want to know the truth without anyone trying to sugarcoat the tough decisions that must be taken to reduce the stress on their families.

Ministers and senior public officials should also stop treating honest citizens who work hard as if they were simpletons unable to understand the consequence of incompetence, mismanagement and corruption in public governance.