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4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 JULY 2026 NEWS NOTICE OF INTENTION TO APPLY FOR AN EMPLOYMENT AGENCY LICENCE Notice is hereby given, in terms of the Employment Agencies Regulations (S.L. 452.130), that: Adam Woodley (0118208A) of 6 Triq il Qasam, Swieqi, SWQ 9000 Malta intends to apply to the Director of the Department for Industrial and Employment Relations (DIER) for a licence to operate as an employment agency, specifically for the recruitment of persons for employment in and outside of Malta. The activities to be carried out include: • Recruitment consultancy and candidate sourcing • Interviewing, selection, and placement of candidates in employment • Recruitment of persons abroad for employment in Malta or elsewhere • Recruitment of persons in Malta for employment in Malta or elsewhere • Advertising of vacancies The business will operate from: 6 Triq il Qasam, Swieqi, SWQ 9000, Malta. Any person wishing to object to this application may do so in writing to the Director, Department for Industrial and Employment Relations, 109/121 Melita Street, Valletta, VLT 1121 Malta, within 21 days of the date of this notice. CONTINUES FROM PAGE 1 A planning expert, Abela is reacting to a technical briefing Enemalta officials gave the press last week, where they attributed the outages to record demand and heatwave pressures on the network. The company CEO even expressed surprise over the record peak demand reached, which was almost 12% higher than the record peak registered in 2023. "The current crisis is best un- derstood not as an electricity failure but as a planning fail- ure," Abela writes, saying the heatwave merely exposed pres- sures that had been building for years. The pressures, he notes, are directly linked to an eco- nomic model "heavily depend- ent on construction activity, continuous tourism growth and sustained population expansion driven primarily by imported labour". He says official figures show that between July 2023 and July 2026 Malta's effective summer population, residential stock and households with air-con- ditioning units all increased at rates broadly matching the rise in peak electricity demand. Abela says peak demand reached a record 741MW this summer, compared with 663MW in 2023, an increase of around 11.8%. During the same period, he estimates that Mal- ta's summer population grew by 9.5%, housing stock by 10.2% and households equipped with air-conditioning by 12.4%. "Malta is not only housing more people. Malta is cool- ing more buildings," he writes, saying the combined impact of population growth, tourism, construction and rising air-con- ditioning use was placing in- creasing pressure on the elec- tricity network. Abela says the wider problem is the failure to anticipate the infrastructure implications of growth. "The challenge was not merely producing electricity but delivering it to growing concen- trations of demand," he writes. He calls for a shift in how de- velopment is planned, saying: "Infrastructure planning should precede development rather than react to it." Abela is an architect and civil engineer specialising in land- use planning and urban design, with postgraduate qualifica- tions in environmental manage- ment and conservation technol- ogy. He worked at the Planning Authority before becoming ERA's first chief executive and currently manages projects at Heritage Malta. Similar sentiments over the lack of foresight to anticipate demand, are also made by econ- omist JP Fabri in his regular col- umn in MaltaToday. Fabri says the real question is not whether Malta can contin- ue growing but whether it is investing in the "invisible infra- structure that allows growth to remain sustainable". "In the end, electricity was never really the story. It was simply the first warning that yesterday's infrastructure is now being asked to carry to- morrow's economy," he argues, adding the recent outages show that Malta's electricity distri- bution network had little to no redundancy. Meanwhile, despite Ene- malta fixing the faults on the high-voltage cables that caused widespread outages, several streets in various localities re- mained without electricity for much longer. Some streets in San Ġwann, Msida and Bormla went days on end without electricity or with intermittent supply. Ruben Abela challenges Enemalta's electricity outages narrative Minister 'lost for words' in meeting with shot police officer's relatives GLENN Bedingfield admitted being "lost for words" when meeting relatives of police of- ficer Johann Vella, who was fighting for his life following a shooting incident on Friday. The home affairs minister was emotional about the grim meeting in hospital as doctors performed life-saving surgery on Vella. "I was humbled in front of relatives who did not yet know what was going to happen with their son, their husband, their brother. I was lost for words because in front of that sorrow, words make little sense," Bed- ingfield said, while addressing a seminar organised by the As- sociation of Maltese Arms Col- lectors and Shooters (AMACS) on Saturday. During Friday's armed stand- off in St Julian's Vella was shot in the face and neck, while an- other police officer, Omar Sha- rif, was also slightly injured af- ter an elderly man fired on the police. The suspected shooter was later named as John Agius. He gave himself up after a tense two-hours, during which police negotiators convinced him to stand down. He is still in police custody. Agius and his brother were in- side their property and initially tried to set fire to a scaffolding on which construction workers were operating. Police and the Civil Protection Department were first called to respond to the suspected arson but the sit- uation escalated into an armed standoff. Bedingfield described the im- pact the incident had on the police force, noting a strong sense of solidarity among of- ficers who carry out their duties daily despite the inherent risks. He said the incident was the result of an irresponsible indi- vidual taking the law into their own hands. "The time is up for cowboys," Bedingfield said, adding society cannot tolerate mentalities that place others' lives in danger. Speaking on the 20th anniver- sary of the Arms Act, the min- ister said legislation provides a framework that balances legit- imate weapon ownership with the state's duty to protect pub- lic safety. He recognised the distinc- tion between legal, responsible ownership and criminal abuse, stressing that possessing a firearm should be viewed as a privilege requiring maturity, discipline, and significant re- sponsibility rather than status. MATTHEW FARRUGIA mfarrugia@mediatoday.com.mt Ruben Abela JP Fabri