Updated 3.40pm, adds PL statement

Opposition leader Bernard Grech on Wednesday promised a €50 million refund to consumers who have been paying more for their electricity consumption since 2013.

Addressing a press conference, Grech said an analysis by the  National Audit Office of Enemalta’s tariff structure had confirmed what the Nationalist Party had been saying for years: that consumers were being robbed millions of euros through additional payments as a result of the way their bills were being worked out. 

He was reacting to a story revealed by Times of Malta on Wednesday that according to a draft report by the NAO, consumers could have paid “extra charges” totalling €6.5 million on their electricity and water bills.

“The Maltese have been robbed for years. Not that we ever doubted it, but today we have an independent source confirming that we were right and this after having analysed more than 1,400 bills that consumers had received,” Grech said. 

He pledged that a Nationalist administration would return the €50 million in over-charged bills in eight years of billing since Enemalta changed its billing structure and then when it had struck a deal with Electrogas to buy electricity at higher rates. 

“The government has a moral and legal duty to find a way to give back to citizens what it has stolen,” Grech said when asked by Times of Malta how it intended to fund the refund if, according to Enemalta’s latest accounts, the company had suffered a €30 million loss in 2020.

PN deputy leader for parliamentary affairs David Agius said the Labour administration, under its former leader Joseph Muscat, had promised to address anomalies in the billing system in 2018 but this was never done. 

PN energy spokesman Ryan Callus said the government had committed itself to purchase electricity from Electrogas and was not using the interconnector as much as it should, despite it being cheaper. 

Moreover, he said the government did not want to divulge the price Malta was paying for  LNG, with Energy Minister Miriam Dalli saying this was commercially sensitive. He said the party was finding a “brick wall” in its attempt to reveal the truth during its analysis of the Electrogas contract at the Public Accounts Committee. 

PL statement

In a reply, the Labour Party said the billing system had been introduced by the Nationalist government in 2009 and had not been changed.

While the Nationalist government had increased rates throwing the country into a recession, the current government had reduced rates by 25% and helped the people in every sector, in spite of being faced by a pandemic.

The reduction in bills, it noted, had left more than half a billion euros in people’s pockets, with rates in Malta being among the cheapest in Europe. 

It said Labour was only the government with the right credentials to continue to address a problem left behind by the previous government in the energy sector.