Former Nationalist Minister Jesmond Mugliett made a strong attack on the government this evening on Arms Ltd, including the new smart grid system.

Speaking in Parliament during the debate on an Opposition motion, Mr Mugliett said the people were paying a high price for a system which was not giving them results.

The €80 million price tag was too high, he said. With that amount of money, as minister he had built all the roads under the Italian financial protocol and EU funding, as well as a sports centre.

The people, he said, rightly wondered whether the government was right to have set up Arms Ltd.

The 5% failure rate in the billing system appeared to him to be too high. When he was responsible for the introduction of the CVA, he was criticised for a far lower error rate, but it seemed that things were different for some people.

Mr Mugliett said that while the new system was not working as it should, the old system was not all that bad.

Other migrations to new billing systems had been successfully made in the past, but then, it seemed that investment on the upgrading of software tailed off.

In the past, Mr Mugliette said, customer services were divided between Valletta and Luqa and between Enemalta and the WSC and the people were spread out. He never saw so much concern by the people as this year.

It would appear, Mr Mugliett said, that people were not given enough training to operate the new software. Had any parallel runs been made between the new system and the old? Was proper filtering made.

The new system, the Nationalist MP said, was translating into higher water and electricity bills for the people because the costs had been factored in.

Those costs included a €700,000 software bill per year for at least four year and a total salary of over €190,000 for four people at Arms Ltd as well as hardware costs, property rental and other costs.

"The people are paying a high price for a service which is not up to scratch," Mr Mugliett said.

It was shameful, he said, that the Arms Ltd communications coordinator was paid as much as a minster but could not speak proper Maltese, could not speak properly into a microphone, and did not have sufficient answers about the legal letter issued by the company to defaulting clients.

The people, after suffering such a shoddy service, had been faced with arrogance, as the threatening legal letter.

The repeated hitches were seriously worrying the people, Mr Mugliett said. Just as worrying was how nobody had assumed responsibility and the Prime Minister had ended up shouldering the blame and issuing an apology.

Mr Mugliett asked who was monitoring the foreign consultants involved in the new system. What performance appraisal was being made? What timeline was there for the system to work properly? Who was responsible for the service level agreement?

Concluding, Mr Mugliett said that the opportunity costs of this project were high and more could have been done with the €80 million - with that amount he built the roads under the Italian protocol and EU funding, a number of other roads and a sports complex.

The people, Mr Mugliett insisted, deserved sensitivity and a better service.