Updated 9.25pm
A Nationalist Party motion seeking to force the government to fully reimburse citizens for overcharged utility bills was defeated in parliament on Monday evening.
The PN however requested a division on the issue, to be held on December 19, meaning the issue will remain pending before lawmakers until just before their Christmas recess.
The issue stems from a discrepancy in the way tariff billing company ARMS calculates citizens’ utility bills. Energy Minister Miriam Dalli has acknowledged that an “anomaly” exists and said impacted citizens will be receiving refunds of up to €8 to make up for the discrepancy, backdated to the start of this year.
But the PN says that is nowhere near enough, arguing that the discrepancy dates back to 2014.
It has threatened to file a class action lawsuit against the government and earlier on Monday said that evening’s parliamentary debate and vote would be the “last chance” the government had before it did so.
That debate was characterised by a series of tit-for-tat political arguments, with Opposition MPs accusing government counterparts of having “stolen’ from the people, and government MPs saying it was the PN that had robbed people with high tariffs when it was in office.
Opposition Leader Bernard Grech said that in 2018, former prime minister Joseph Muscat himself had admitted there was an anomaly in the billing system, and that it was to be rectified by 2019.
"The Auditor General found that the government was stealing €6.5 million annually, which amounts to almost €60 million in 9 years. And it's not just Nationalists or Labourites that were being robbed. Everyone was being overcharged," he argued.
Government MPs retaliated, saying the billing regulation was, in fact, introduced in 2009, under a PN administration, and that former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi had infamously said he would vote 'wholeheartedly' in favour of high utility bills.
Energy Minister Miriam Dalli said it was a PN government that 'robbed' the people, when it embraced high utility bills while giving people a mere five light bulbs.
The government continues to cushion historical spikes in international energy prices while investing in sustainable energy for the future, she said.
PN MP Mark Anthony Sammut, who tabled the motion, spoke last before the vote was taken, reacting to Minister Dalli’s comments and urging her to simply vote in favour of the amendment so that people are reimbursed with the money that was overcharged.
If, as she said, the flawed system began under a PN administration in 2009, let us all vote in favour of the motion and reimburse people from 2009 onwards, he argued.
Then, the amounts in refunds per year should be published, he added, so that people will know when the system started ‘robbing’ them.
The motion was put to a vote, with deputy speaker David Agius announcing that the PN motion was defeated. But Agius then noted that the Opposition was requesting a division on the motion, and scheduled that vote for December 19.