Last updated at 7.15pm 

Parts of Mosta and Naxxar were without power until late in the morning on Tuesday after several localities suffered outages on Monday evening as temperatures soared.  But the same parts of Naxxar reported yet another outage on Tuesday evening, with no idea how long it would last.

"Dear customer, fault location works to be followed by excavation works which will allow our technical team to access and repair the faults that developed are currently underway. Your electricity supply will be restored once works are finalised," Enemata said in a message to an exasperated client. 

"We understand how frustrating this situation is and assure you that we are doing our utmost to have electricity supply restored as soon as technically possible."

On Tuesday morning, Enemalta had said in a statement that power should be restored to all customers by the afternoon. It said its engineers and technicians worked throughout the night to carry out extensive repairs following multiple cable faults.

The company said five unrelated underground cable faults developed in different parts of the Naxxar and Mosta, disrupting supply in different areas.

Parts of Sliema, Rabat and Għargħur were also hit by outages, according to reports. 

One reader told Times of Malta that an Enemalta customer service officer said there were 13 localities without power due to a "system overload".

Enemalta said that while electricity supply to some customers was restored within a short time through alternative network connections, in some areas, the faults affected the additional connections as well and supply restoration was not possible until the cable repairs are completed.

These repairs required road digging and delicate high-voltage cable jointing works to replace the damaged cables. 

CEO Jonathan Cardona thanked the workers involved in the repairs and customers for their cooperation.

He said faults in the underground infrastructure cannot be eliminated, however, through an ongoing six-year €90 million network reinforcement programme, the company is committed to keep improving network flexibility and resilience so that when such difficulties happen, supply can be restored in the shortest time possible.

Enemalta said it kept its clients informed of developments by SMS. One can apply to receive such SMSs by sending a text message with the ID number of the account holder to 7905 2492.

Regular updates are also being shared on the company’s Facebook page. Live updates of planned and unplanned electricity supply disruptions are also available on the Enemalta website.

There have been sporadic power cuts in several localities throughout the last days. 

A week-long heatwave has forced many households and establishments to resort to cooling systems, putting a major strain on the power providers.