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Kurt Sansone
Always the brash type he is, investments minister Austin Gatt has not yet apologised for his behaviour on Radio 101 last week when in response to a series of complaints by elderly people about the gas shortage, he unethically gave out the GRTU’s office number on air and asked several elderly people to phone there with their complaints.
While ministry officials were this week frantically trying to patch up the damage done by Gatt’s knee-jerk reaction on the radio, they insisted the minister’s reaction was spurned by inadequate gas distribution that persisted despite the fact that Enemalta’s production levels had risen dramatically after the consignment of liquid gas had arrived a week earlier.
Those who did follow the minister’s advice on Radio 101 were sent on a fishing expedition, as the GRTU could not provide the answers. The minister’s unwarranted behaviour simply perpetuated the misery of those elderly people who were left for days and weeks without a gas cylinder replacement.
It is highly unlikely Gatt will ever apologise for the rough attitude he adopted towards the seventy-year old individuals who probably resorted to the only accessible channel of complaint they knew about - ringing up a radio station.
Senior government officials are expecting the gas supply situation to return to normal by the end of the week after Enemalta said it stepped up production, temporarily on a round-the-clock basis, and according to the corporation, distributors are doing more than the usual rounds to satisfy consumer demand. However, people phoning this newspaper from several localities including Xemxija, Mellieha, Valletta and Sliema said the distribution at the normal schedule was not being kept and that they still faced difficulties having gas delivered to their homes.
The crux of the gas crisis is Enemalta’s lack of storage facilities, which can only be remedied when the new multi-million gas plant is built next to the Freeport some time in the future. Enemalta’s storage capacity means the Corporation’s gas reserves will only last for around three weeks if left un-replenished.
When a shipment of liquid petroleum gas was delayed because of bad weather in the Mediterranean, a number of other factors coalesced leading to the alarming situation that developed by the second week of February.
The stock shortage of gas cylinders because of the gradual withdrawal of faulty cylinders, the unusually cold weather and the expected consumer shift to gas for heating homes after the exorbitant rise in the price of kerosene and the introduction of a surcharge on electricity bills, all contributed to the panic situation that arose.
Unofficially, government functionaries talking to MaltaToday insisted the situation precipitated after l-orizzont came out with its blaring headline ‘Gas has finished’ (Spicca l-gass) on the same day that the Enemalta plant came to a standstill because gas had run out.
Officials said the gas plant stopped functioning for one and a half days until the delayed shipment of LPG eventually arrived. They insisted that panic buying after l-orizzont’s article aggravated the problem because people brought out every gas cylinder they had to exchange it for a new one. It is understood that Enemalta was the recipient of an abnormally high amount of rusty old cylinders, which have been out of circulation for quite some time.
Meanwhile, as the shortage subsides, Austin Gatt’s lack of sensitivity towards the problems created for elderly people by the crisis sticks out like a sore thumb. The situation may have been triggered by an act of God (bad weather) but the least people expected was a sincere apology from the country’s political authorities and a solid reassurance that measures were being taken to ensure that the most vulnerable were being serviced.
In the absence of these two basic measures it is no wonder that panic buying ensued, with or without l-orizzont’s article.
kurt@newsworksltd.com
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