Enemalta, the state-owned monopoly providing electricity to all households and businesses in Malta, is again in the news for the wrong reasons.
Tens of thousands of consumers in various localities suffered power cuts for several hours in the last few days at the peak of a persistent heat wave.
Some areas are still being affected by the power cuts. More hardships will likely be suffered as the causes of these outages are structural weaknesses in the distribution system.
Enemalta’s reactions to this crisis varied from apologising to residents affected by the cuts to highlighting that the corporation is investing €90 million in the distribution network over six years “to reduce the risks and duration of unplanned outages”.
Saying sorry for the inconvenience and unnecessary hardship inflicted on consumers is insufficient when considering the importance of a reliable electricity supply to various community sectors. For some, the power cuts were no more than an inconvenience. For many others, it was a hardship that the service provider was duty bound to avoid.
Older people and those depending on equipment operating on electricity to alleviate their medical conditions suffered the most, especially as the loss of power lasted more than 24 hours in some cases.
Many families had to throw away food stored in their refrigerators and freezers since storage in high temperatures for a long time involved hygiene and food safety risks.
Businesses in affected areas lost trade as customers could not shop normally during the long hours of outages. Enemalta CEO Jonathan Cardona dampened any expectations of compensation to aggrieved consumers stating that the corporation will only consider compensation for ‘fixed assets’ damaged by the power cuts and not for wasted consumables like food.
In a statement, Enemalta explained that underground cable faults caused most disruptions. Cardona unconvincingly said the high temperatures damaged the underground electricity cables. Such temperatures are not an ‘act of God’ like an earthquake.
Surely Malta is not the only country to experience such high temperatures.
More likely, the blackouts are a consequence of bad planning and inadequate distribution system ongoing maintenance.
It is totally unacceptable for a state monopoly financed by taxpayers’ money not to provide a reliable essential service to so many citizens.
The Enemalta workers involved in resolving this problem deserve the thanks of all those affected by the power cuts.
The corporation’s top brass and their political masters deserve condemnation for failing to provide reliable electricity to households and businesses at all times.
Many understandably fear that this disgraceful Enemalta failure to support the community will persist.
The electricity distribution network is creaking due to bad planning and inadequate investment over the years as the population grew rapidly and consumption increased.
The network development undertaken in the first six months of this year, as described by the corporation, may seem impressive but does little to reassure consumers that the outages of the last few days will not be experienced again in the coming months.
The government must hold itself accountable for this failure of a public service provider.
The government must now inform the public how it intends to deal with the unreliability of such an essential public service in the shortest possible time.