Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1546037
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 2 AUGUST 2026 OPINION Switched off from reality PN shadow minister for energy and the environment Mark Anthony Sammut ANOTHER summer heatwave, another wave of blackouts, and once again this government's script remains unchanged. With temperatures topping 43°C and peak demand reaching a record 710MW, underground cables across Malta and Gozo are fail- ing, leaving communities in darkness for hours or days. Af- ter 13 years in office, blaming the weather has worn thin. The human cost is severe. Vulnerable citizens relying on oxygen ma- chines, stairlifts, or refrigerated medicine are left stranded, small businesses lose spoiled stock, and parents struggle to cool in- fants through sweltering nights. This is no longer a technical hitch; it is a breakdown of public health and basic dignity. The crisis extends beyond outright blackouts to damaging voltage fluctuations outside the legal 10% threshold of 230V. Citizens who install protection regulators to safeguard expen- sive appliances find them con- stantly tripping because supply cannot stay within safe limits. Forcing families to choose be- tween destroying appliances or living in sweltering darkness is an indictment of our grid. The government points to €140 million invested between 2023 and 2025 as proof of ac- tion. Yet spending money and solving problems are not the same thing. Streets have been dug up and resurfaced on- ly months apart, yet outages persist. When pressed in par- liament for a precise itemised breakdown of cable purchas- es, installation, and excavation costs, the minister offered only a generic total figure without a single detail. This evasion makes an independent techni- cal and value-for-money audit unavoidable. There are engineering ques- tions too. Countries with far higher average temperatures than ours do not suffer cable failures on this scale every sum- mer. It is fair to ask whether our specifications for burying and spacing underground cables are adequate for heat dissipation, and whether contractors re- instating roads afterwards are properly supervised. Further- more, it is fair to ask where the regulator has been throughout this debacle. The Regulator for Energy and Water Services (REWS) exists to hold the operator to account, yet it has stayed largely silent while thousands of consumers suffered outside the legal ser- vice standards it is meant to enforce. The public still has not seen Enemalta's Network De- velopment Plan, which the reg- ulator must receive and assess every two years by law, nor au- dited accounts for the last three years, nor an explanation of what became of tens of millions of euros linked to carbon credit transactions reported missing. This crisis also exposes a wid- er gap in our climate planning. Extreme heat is no longer an anomaly; it is the new baseline. Yet the national strategy meant to prepare our infrastructure for exactly this stress remains stuck in procurement, long af- ter it was legally due. This sum- mer's suffering should force that work to be finished, with the grid stress-tested against future heat levels and popula- tion growth rather than yester- day's assumptions. Compensation as a right Compensation for those af- fected should not depend on ministerial goodwill. Enemalta operates as a partly privatised company with commercial ob- ligations, and in most other European countries consumers affected by prolonged outages receive automatic compensa- tion as a right, applied directly to their bills by the regulator. That is the standard this coun- try should aspire for, rather than treating redress as a fa- vour handed down from gov- ernment. Rather than confronting any of this, the government has spent the past fortnight shifting blame anywhere but onto itself. At one point it even suggest- ed responsibility lay with the Enemalta workers, who have spent this heatwave repairing faults around the clock, often in dangerous conditions. Those workers deserve recognition, not scapegoating. The real record is set out plainly in the National Audit Office's own report. High-volt- age network investment in 2023 stood at roughly a third of what it had been in 2014, even as population growth and energy demand surged under this gov- ernment's own economic mod- el. That is over a decade of un- derinvestment under a Labour administration, not a legacy of anyone who came before it. Most telling is the govern- ment's refusal to even discuss any of this. Last week, govern- ment MPs on the Public Ac- counts Committee blocked a discussion of the Auditor Gen- eral's report into the 2023 sup- ply crisis, on the pretext that it should wait for an updated version. Families who had just endured days without electric- ity were effectively told parlia- ment has no time for them until autumn. Separately, a no-confi- dence vote in Energy Minister Miriam Dalli has been delayed. Why is the prime minister afraid of putting the motion to a vote now? Why is he so weak with his ministers? The heat is beyond anyone's control. Whether our grid can withstand it, whether pub- lic money is spent effectively, and whether parliament is al- lowed to scrutinise any of it, are not. Those responsibilities sit squarely with a government that has had 13 years, and two consecutive terms under the same minister, to get it right. It has not, and it is the people of Malta and Gozo who keep pay- ing the price, one blackout at a time. The heat is beyond anyone's control. Whether our grid can withstand it, whether public money is spent effectively, and whether parliament is allowed to scrutinise any of it, are not