Matthew Vella
The Labour Party has lambasted the government for not investing in the Delimara power station when it was predicted, way back in 2006, that the island could face a general blackout.
The predictions appear to have come true with a day-long blackout last week that is believed to have cost businesses anything up to €10 million due to the stoppage in work.
In a statement issued yesterday, the PL said a 2006 Enemalta report entitled ‘Electricity Generation Plan – 2006-2015’ stated that in 2009, “the outage of any plant during the summer peak months will imply power outages in a number of areas of the islands, which might last more than 48 hours at one time until the necessary repairs are carried out on the generating plant.”
The report goes on to state that “action needs to be taken either to reduce the peak demand or to acquire additional generating capacity before this date.”
The PL accused the prime minister of not doing anything about this warning.
“It is clear that Gonzi’s government has not invested as necessary, and as advised by its experts, so that businesses and families do not suffer any inconvenience from power outages.”
The PL said taxpayers had not yet been offered a satisfactory justification for the power outage, and accused Gonzi of working “without a plan and with management-by-crisis”.
“Even worse is that he did not heed to the advice first given to him three years ago. Instead he chose to increase the burden on families with higher utility bills to reduce consumption in this inhumane and irresponsible way.”
The PL said a serious government would have taken immediate action back in 2006 when experts were predicting what would happen in the future, and invested in clean energy.
In a statement issued later yesterday evening, the ministry for investments, transport and communications declared that “government does not wait for the Labour party to invest. The investment is a continuous one.”
Austin Gatt’s ministry accused Labour of attempting to attract political sympathy and ignoring the million-euro investment in electricity generation.
“The 2006 report is the same plan Enemalta is implementing to improve electriciy generation. The invesment and implementatino of the plan is taking place. Enemalta is investing in the best technology, the increase in energy demand is backed by a 60MW reserve and the capacity of the two power stations is 551MW when the highest demand is around 430MW.”
The ministry added that it has already issued a tender for the Delimara extension which will include eight new machines to take on a full, 30-minute load. The power station was also implementing the SCADA monitoring system on power distribution and was investing in a 225MW interconnector to Sicily, which will provide enough capacity for an 810MW-hour overload.
“Labour has ignored this investment and is bending the facts simply to suit its on political campaign and to alarm the people,” the ministry said.
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