Those involved in restoring power had the work cut out after a fault at the Delimara power station and an explosion at the Marsa distribution centre plunged the country into darkness.

With few hard facts to hand, it is pointless indulging in speculation as to what caused the incident, and, even more so, in mindless political jibes that are so often levelled at the administration whenever there is a power failure. Power cuts will happen and the political fanatics from the two main parties should wait for the results of the investigation into this one before they start trading insults.

Yet, there is no getting away from the fact that this incident was painful and embarrassing, which highlighted the need for the island to have a strong power generation and distribution set-up and well-planned alternative strategies that can be made use of in an emergency such as Tuesday’s. Greater efficiency than we saw yesterday in reacting to what happened would, no doubt, help cut the cost of a power failure.

The outage must have cost the country a great deal in terms of lost revenue. Restaurants and places of entertainment without their own generators had to shut down and aircraft had to be diverted to other places.

A power outage at the peak of summer has other costs as well – the misery of having to stand the heat indoors. This affects everybody but particularly so the bedridden or disabled.

With air-conditioners running at full blast, the load on power stations is enormous at this time. However, with the building of a new gas-fired power station and the link-up with the European power grid through the interconnector that is being laid between Malta and Sicily, the country is expected to be well supplied with power.

The government is constantly assuring the country that the plan for the new plant is on track but people have their doubts about this.

Unfortunately, the government has not been transparent enough over its energy plans, in which both China and private interests are involved.

China’s Shanghai Electric is taking 33 per cent of Enemalta for €100 million and is also buying the BWSC plant for €150 million.

The Opposition had argued that the government should have first given all the necessary information about its plans to sell a significant part of the power-generating corporation to the Chinese government before asking for Parliament’s consent.

The government was also criticised for not publishing the contract with the company that is building the gas-fired power station, Electrogas.

This is unacceptable, more so for a government that has talked so much about the need for greater transparency and accountability. Even one of the Labour MPs had disagreed with such a stance. The MP, Marlene Farrugia, had not turned up for the vote on the Bill transforming the corporation into Enemalta plc. She was reported saying at the time that she did not want to give her consent to something about which she did not know enough.

People ought to know more than “enough” about projects that are so vitally important to the island’s social and economic well-being. As businesses yesterday counted the cost of the power cut, the men operating the stations are no doubt keeping their fingers crossed that no further incidents occur. Yet the majority of people are convinced that they will.

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