Bernard Grech wants emergency parliament sitting to discuss nationwide power outages

Updated with letter from the Deputy Prime Minister to the Speaker of the House

Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech wants parliament to convene for an emergency sitting to discuss the nation-wide power outages of the past four days.

Calling it a “national crisis”, Grech said outages bring about added challenges on people of all ages.

He said the PN is listening to the pleas of people and the negative effects they are suffering from. “On the other hand, Robert Abela and Miriam Dalli are totally absent on this issue.”

“People have a right to know the truth, and given the needed explanations and facts on the outages,” Grech said.

He said Robert Abela should answer for the government’s shortcomings, and the appropriate forum to do so, is parliament.

A number of localities across Malta and Gozo have been experiencing pro-longed power cuts, with some affected worse than others.

Enemalta CEO Jonathan Cardona has blamed cable faults for the power outages, and not overloads. “Consumption has been increasing, with a new record of 604MW at peak hours. This is the first time that output went beyond 600MW.”

But the national system is capable of providing well over 600MW. “We can reach 830MW, so there’s a good margin.”

Cardona said that soaring temperatures have caused roads to heat up, and this heat is bringing out certain latent defects in underground cables. “In this circumstance, temperatures increased in a short amount of time, so the faults also came out in a short amount of time,” he said.

'A partisan manoeuvre' - Fearne

In a letter to the Speaker of the House, Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne slammed Grech's request as a partisan manoeuvre and dismissed the request entirely.

Fearne said the government is working to resupply energy to residences affected by power outages. "Not only is the government ensuring that the public is kept abreast of the latest developments, but it is working to address existing issues and continue the reinforcement of the distribution system, which started a year and a half ago".

Read the letter below