UHM hits out at GWU over tariffs

The Union Haddiema Maghqudin (UHM) has launched a fierce attack on the GWU after the GWU's newspaper l-orizzont today printed a story, upside down, on its front page saying the UHM had made a U-turn over the electricity tariffs.

The UHM yesterday urged the governemnt to reduce the utility tariffs as soon as possible, now that oil prices had stabilised at a low level.

The UHM said the truth was that the country would really have been driven into a wall had the GWU's proposals on the tariffs been accepted by the Prime Minister.

One of the GWU's proposals last November 18, the UHM said, was for Malta to make futures purchases of fuel oil at the market price of the time so that, it had argued, the average price for 2009 could be reduced.

This would have meant that Malta would have ended up buying oil at a considerably higher price than today's. Therefore, it would not have been possible for utility prices to go down even now that the international oil price has dropped.

The UHM claimed that during talks on the utility tariffs within the MCESD, the GWU never made any proposal.

And it was actually the GWU which made a u-turn on the tariffs by first agreeing with the Prime Minister, and then staring to ask for clarifications, the UHM said.

Its own position, the UHM said, had been clear and consistent, in that it had always insisted that once oil prices dropped, so too should the tariffs.