Household utility bills to adjust automatically after birth of a child or loss of a family member

Households will be able to automatically ajdust their utility bills following the birth of a child or the death of a family member.

This will be possible after an agreement between Identity Malta Agency and utility billing company ARMS Ltd.

The agreement, signed today, ensures the entities work more efficiently, saving time and effort for customers. 

Adjusting the number of household members is important because it affects the subsidy calculation for utility bills.

Parents notifying the addition of a newborn within the same household can now include their utilities’ account number when filling in the declaration of birth and automatically have the correct subsidy computation charged to their utility bills.

Customers will not need to visit ARMS offices to register the change in household composition, since this is done automatically.

In the case of the death of a person, a similar arrangement is already in place whereby ARMS Ltd automatically re-adjusts the utility bill computation to reflect the number of persons living in the same household.

Citizenship Parliamentary Secretary Alex Muscat said around 8,000 families yearly will benefit from the automatic updating of utility bills with household members

Speaking after the signing, Energy Minister Miriam Dalli said this agreement reduces bureaucracy and leads to efficiency in the services provided by government entities. “This is the kind of improvement that citizens expect from public entities, where collaboration and cooperation ultimately benefits citizens,” she said.

Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship Alex Muscat applauded both entities for their joint effort in taking a more customer-centric approach. He stated that over 4,000 births and over 3,500 deaths were registered last year, which means that around 8,000 families will benefit yearly from the initiative.

Anton Sevasta and Silvio Scerri signed the memorandum of understanding on behalf of Identity Malta Agency and ARMS Ltd, respectively.