Editorial

As the average family keeps working out plans to meet the impact of the fuel surcharge on its spending power, announcements of reductions in the surcharge rate may ease the nerves but they will not remove the burden as the surcharge remains heavy. Suddenly, many families are rearranging their household budgets to factor in a cost they had falsely hoped would never come.

Well, the time to face facts has come and many are finding that even with the reductions announced the other day, the fuel bills they are getting have forced them to introduce new spending constraints. The government had to impose the surcharge following the rise in the price of oil, which has now gone down again. On its part, the opposition is convinced that the rate ought to be lower than it is at present, and it also lambasts the government for inefficiency at the power generation plants and for other shortcomings.

Will optimum efficiency enable the corporation to do away with the surcharge altogether? The rise in the price of oil has been biting hard, pushing up costs to all. Efficiency, both in the generation of electricity and in the running of the plants, will cut costs, but they will not remove the fact that the cost of fuel is still very high.

Tapping alternative energy, solar and wind, will help too, although wind energy, about which there is so much talk at present, might not cut the price to the consumer to the degree many think it could, at least on the basis of today's technology. In the case of solar energy, Malta has been terribly late in seriously considering its benefits, but as in so many other things in life, it is never too late to promote this form of energy.

Besides the delay by Malta in seriously considering tapping other forms of energy, there is an irony that stares the country in the face. As the fuel bills burn bigger holes in everyone's pockets, the time spent in traffic jams is getting longer, not shorter. Come tomorrow afternoon, a driver can easily squander a quarter of a petrol tank logjammed somewhere between Ghajn Tuffieha and the Mosta roundabout, using the new Mgarr road.

The time roadworks generally take to be completed, often well beyond schedule, and the alternative road arrangements made, if any, make up another important side to the argument, besides being a source of deep frustration. But leaving this argument aside, the point is that people know that traffic diversions are causing so much traffic jams and, yet, there does not seem to be any change in habits. The national fuel cost of the Sunday afternoon drive must have surely shot up skyhigh since the change of weather.

Taking the argument home, as it were, the sharp rise in the fuel bills might have now led many to think of ways of how to save energy. Every little counts when it comes to energy saving. Leaving an air-conditioner, or lights, on when not in the room may make all the difference to a bill. New measures were announced in the budget to encourage a more efficient use of energy.

With the rise in the price of oil, the national oil bill has shot up by Lm48 million. Part of it goes for the desalination plants as only half of the drinking water comes from the aquifers. Water production is taking up to eight per cent of the total electricity production. Saving energy is, therefore, good both for the consumer and for the country.