The Nationalist Party must stop its "scaremongering campaign" about Sunday’s power outage, Energy Minister Miriam Dalli said on Monday. 

“I appeal to the Opposition to stop these scaremongering campaigns and lack of truth, because if nothing was being done, people would have not had electricity back within an hour,” she said. 

Dalli briefly addressed Sunday evening’s nationwide power outage during the winding up of a parliamentary discussion on the income and expenditure of the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA).

On Monday morning Enemalta said the Malta-Sicily interconnector was switched off on Sunday morning for maintenance works on the switchgear at the Magħtab terminal station. 

During testing of the switchgear at Magħtab, several distribution feeders tripped at 6.08pm. Subsequently, a number of machines at Delimara also tripped. The tripped distribution feeders were switched back on, and full supply was restored by 7.26pm. 

Dalli said the emergency power plant in Dellimara was examined by ERA and is in line with IPCC directives. 

Dalli slammed the Opposition for saying little was being done in the energy sector. 

“It was indeed the Nationalist Party government that planned the interconnector. However, the work on it was done by the Labour government,” she said.

Earlier, PN MP Darren Carabott said that Sunday's power cut was proof the country was fully dependent on the interconnector that had been installed during a PN administration. 

“Where is the energy mix promised by the Labour party government? Does this mean that the country is dependent on an interconnector? And that, if it is switched off, we do not have the resources to run without it?" he asked. 

He asked for the government's vision and proposals for the island's energy sector. 

"Yesterday's was a clear example of how this government has failed our country when it comes to the provision of energy," he said.