Editorial

Just when the government is stepping up its promotion about plans to turn the island into a centre of excellence, it has had a rude awakening in the shape of two major power cuts in 11 days. This has now dealt a severe blow to its plans as it means that, from now on, it can hardly continue to play the same tune. A centre of excellence indeed!

The blow to the Nationalist Party, in political terms, is great but it is even greater to the country as it struggles to climb out of the recession. However unpalatable it may be, the truth is that not enough attention appears to have been paid to ensuring that the generation and supply of electricity keep up with the island's new needs. Had there been enough planning, the country would not have had four island-wide power cuts in 12 months.

The immediate cost to the country runs into millions of euros but besides this there is another more serious cost: the damage the cuts are doing to Malta's aspirations to continue to expand its economy and to its image. This is no light matter and if the power cuts have been deemed by all, and rightly so, as unacceptable, so is the Finance Minister's response to the latest outage. In fact, the minister's reaction is similar to that often given by others caught in similar circumstances anywhere else in the world.

There is one big difference though. In the more advanced countries, the outrage over the power cuts would have been so great and so ruthless that heads would have rolled already. Enemalta, which is government owned, is not an ordinary corporation but one that is most essential to the island's social and economic well-being as it provides one of the country's basic infrastructural services. There are no private utility firms in operation and it is unlikely that any could risk such a huge capital investment in competition with the national supplier.

This means that the corporation's responsibility in ensuring regular and adequate supply, and a reliable distribution service, is even greater than if the island had private suppliers or if it had been connected to the power grid in nearby Sicily. All this leads to one simple question: Who is going to take political responsibility for all that is happening? This is not being said out of revenge but out of political propriety that ought to have ensured regular monitoring and planning.

There was a time when, with the building of the Delimara power station, the people were led to believe that the problem over power generation and supply was solved and that the Marsa power station was about to be phased out. What, exactly, has happened since then? Is it too much for the country to expect from the government a blow-by-blow account? The country needs to know and the government ought to show a greater sense of accountability over this than it has done so far.

A minister speaking of the "fragility" of the system when his government is pushing the idea that Malta is being turned into a centre of excellence is hard to take. Indeed, it is a gross insult to the intelligence of the people. The cherry on the cake of the island-wide frustration is the minister writing to the corporation to set up committee to evaluate a plan for generation capacity so that such incidents are avoided. This is truly unbelievable.