Misguided tax on lighting

Enemalta has to foot the taxes bill, as it uses mercury vapour lamps to light our streets. These lamps contain mercury and pollute once their life span is used. Not fluorescent tubes dear minister which don´t contain mercury. And as already explained by Mr Pace both energy saving lamps and fluorescent tubes are similar.

Fluorescent tubes have separate ballast and starters. The so-called energy savers which you correctly said have internal electronic ballast. This means that while you can change a fluorescent tube, choke or starter separately, you cannot do this with energy savers and you have to dispose of the whole thing.

In this way you will be causing more pollution by disposing of the whole thing without saving anything and by having to produce the whole thing again instead of the part that went wrong.

I too was under the impression that neon tubes are energy savers. My late father, now 30 years gone, had installed these in our shop (still run by my sister) because they were considered energy savers. We have them in our (largish) kitchen/dining, although the modern round ones. I have missed this tax thing in the budget! So although we have been "saving" energy for so many years, we are now to be taxed! Being a recently retired civil servant, I know that more then half of the lighting comes from neon tubes. So please may we know whether or not these are energy savers? I am afraid that replacing these old neon tubes would really be a disaster.

@ Mr Pace - I think that my first comment is extremely relevant, when one consider the huge number of neon tubes that a school has. Imagine having to replace them, with the 0.50 tax on each one!

Messrs Farrugia/Scerri Gatt: What you wrote is irrelevant to the matter of the government taxing energy saving fluorescent tubes (please do not call them neon tubes).

@Steven Apap - How wrong and thwarted you are. Church schools are anything but commercial. And this is especially so since the Agreement of 1984, when every single penny that the school receives goes to maintenance and to keep the status quo.

Whenever a penny was 'saved' by the religious administrators of these schools, it went back to the students that they teach, through more amenities and resources.

But of course, something inside me tells me that I am wasting my time, trying to convert someone with a chip on his should with regard to church schools, and this for some reason or other, which is absolutely not the fault of said charitable institutions.

Oh, and while you are at it - whenever there is a business concern (and you claim that Church schools are so), there is bound to be someone, a person or persons, who is making and enjoying the fruits of such a concern. You could perhaps, tell us WHO such individuals are behind the church schools businesses as you choose to call them.

Dear Steven, Can you please enlighten us how can church schools be considered as a business when they do not charge any fees (they are legally bound not to) and when the government pays only for the necessary teachers (counselors are not paid by government).

Are you one of those that fights to the last to get his/her child in a Church school (obviously s he/she reckons that the child will get a better education than from the other schools) but you expect this for free?

To digress. Mr Farrugia,Church schools are a business .Why should they not be charged electricity at commercial rates?. I think it fair.

Not only that, I also think that the Government subsidies they enjoy should be done away with. It might even be the case that the EU would have something to say re the state subsiding a business.

@ Mr Pace - But you see, neon tubes are quite common, so they simply have to be taxed!

And has anyone given a thought about neon tubes in schools? How are schools expected to switch from neon tubes to some other means of lighting? What other means of lighting is more practical than neon tubes in class-rooms?

And do we realise that Church schools electricity tariffs are charged at a commercial rate? How fair is that?