Mark Anthony Sammut: Minister ‘accomplice’ in ARMS eco-reduction errors

Opposition MP Mark Anthony Sammut accused Energy Minister Miriam Dalli for being an “accomplice” in failures by state energy provider ARMS on incorrect eco-tax charges.

“This did not happen behind her back. She was an accomplice,” Sammut said.

Last month the Nationalist Party, through Sammut and MP Graziella Galea, revealed ARMS consumers were affected by errors linked to the eco-contribution on water and electricity bills.

ARMS and the government have rejected claims that tens of thousands of accounts were affected, saying only a small percentage of customers were impacted by a technical issue arising from a 2024 upgrade that was addressed, and that no one would lose out financially. An independent audit has also been appointed to review the matter.

But Sammut said the reasoning given by ARMS that the issue stemmed from a technical upgrade in 2024 was debunked, going on to table a September 2023 bill showing the same error.

Sammut said ARMS only corrected the eco-reduction charges of consumers who formally complained, while failing to inform the wider public for more than a year that bills may have been wrong. He described the situation as evidence of political “interference and incompetence” within the state-owned entity.

“You just have to look at the ARMS board, almost half of them are part of the Labour executive,” he said.

He doubled down on his claim that around 50,000 ARMS accounts were impacted, although he clarified that not all of those accounts had been affected specifically by eco-reduction errors.

According to Sammut, ARMS customer care agents warned the company’s leadership as early as February 2025 that consumers were losing money due to incorrect eco-reduction charges. Despite this, he said, ARMS took no meaningful steps to inform the public.

Sammut criticised ARMS for spending €200,000 on a public information campaign about energy subsidies while failing to post even a free notice on social media to alert consumers to the eco-reduction issue.

“They defended it instead of apologising,” he said, adding that the government had attempted to downplay the problem by arguing that the sums involved were only a few hundred euros per household. “For them, people are just numbers,” he said.

He said that only after the issue was revealed publicly were the details of hundreds of affected households forwarded to customer care agents so that bills could be corrected.

Sammut said the the Nationalist Party had called for both the energy regulator and the Consumer Affairs Authority to investigate the matter. He added that the consumer authority had already confirmed it was investigating, while the energy regulator had yet to respond.

“This is not a question of an audit, but a question of trust,” Sammut said. “People cannot trust ARMS when it knows it tried to hide the problem.”

‘Use of emergency plant shows lack of forward planning’

Mark Anthony Sammut also spoke on the use of the emergency plant at Delimara during Storm Harry.

Speaking on TVM’s Mill-Kamra, the energy minister said due to the rough weather in the area last month, Enemalta resorted to the diesel-powered emergency power plant in Delimara after the LNG tanker had to be moved to storm mooring position.

Dalli defended the emergency plant, saying it showed government’s long-term planning for the sector.

But Sammut slammed its use, saying it was unacceptable the country had to rely on an emergency plant for its energy during a storm.