Arms Ltd failure is government failure - PL

The Prime Minister's admission about the poor service at Arms Ltd was an admission of the failure of his own government, Labour utility services spokesman Marlene Pullicino said today.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday that the people deserved an apology for the poor service they were giving, and said he had intervened for the situation to improve.

Ms Pullicino said the government should have set up another payment office in Valletta once the old one needed to be closed down, rather than moving operations to Luqa, which was inconvenient to many people.

Furthermore, the government had been saying for the past two months that a new office would be opened at Blata l-Bajda, without anything having actually happened and without anyone having said what precautions would be taken for people crossing the busy road.

But these, Ms Pullicino said, were not the only failures in this sector.

The biggest was the way the government had unjustifiably raised utility bills, even when the price of oil had been falling.

Furthermore, many people had not received their energy benefit. Others were denied the benefit even if they received an energy voucher of €1. Some people had seen a situation where their vouchers expired before the bills were received, Ms Pullicino said.