Scores of households will have to wait weeks for the installation of new electricity services because of industrial action at Enemalta, according to acting chairman William Spiteri Bailey.
General Workers’ Union directives have created a nine-week backlog of applications for Enemalta services, the chairman said when contacted.
Mr Spiteri Bailey said the corporation was unable to process around 1,000 applications for different services.
The union last month directed all Enemalta employees to refrain from using the company’s management information system, which forms the basis of its operations, ranging from financial administration to stores and street lighting repairs.
This prompted the corporation to file a judicial protest lamenting that the directives were causing “great damage” to the company, and called on the union to withdraw the directives, while saying it would hold the GWU responsible for any financial loss.
Mr Spiteri Bailey said the issue revolved around the reorganisation of the corporation’s customer care and compliance office, which is now the responsibility of ARMS Ltd.
He said the credit control section had been dismantled because the corporation no longer issued bills or collected money. Instead of making the workers redundant, Enemalta found alternative work for them in the same grade and with the same pay.
However, the seven workers wanted to continue working a 12-hour shift, including on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Moreover, they were refusing to be redeployed within the company as they wanted to continue working together.
Mr Spiteri Bailey said the corporation offered retraining in cases where employees needed to be trained to carry out their new job.
The union’s directives were blocking every step being taken to serve customers, he said. The corporation would now have to pay workers overtime to see to the backlog.
However, union section secretary Jason Deguara defended the directives, saying the 1,000 applications being mentioned were being blocked by the corporation itself through its unwillingness to solve the problems.
He said the union had formally written to the corporation on Friday, requesting the setting up an independent board of inquiry to probe whether the corporation was discriminating against GWU members.
But Enemalta, through Mr Spiteri Bailey, rejected the request, saying the corporation saw no need to set up the investigating board because the allegations were false and did not merit investigation.
Mr Deguara said the union had offered to call off all industrial action if the investigation was carried out but the corporation refused to do this.
Asked about the next step, Mr Deguara said the union would now name and shame those people who were blatantly discriminating against union members.