It looks like Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi lost their way on March 8. Instead of going to Delimara to inaugurate the new gas-fired power station they were driven to Marsa to mark the switching off of the Marsa power station.

The Marsa power station was already switched off on February 15, even though sections are in ‘cold’ standby. But when you have nothing new to offer, you just invent a media occasion, especially when one of the localities where local elections were held on Saturday was Marsa.

For the Labour government, March 8 should have been a red letter day: they promised a new gas-fired power station in Delimara. They were so sure that this was going to happen that Muscat went so far as to promise to resign if it is not on line producing electricity. March 8 is now history and the building of the new power station has not even started.

Muscat broke his promise. He chickened off; he did not resign.

Muscat went on record describing the switching off of the Marsa power station as a milestone that came 27 years late. What a cheat. How could anyone be so mean?

Twenty-seven years ago Malta had a change of government, from Labour to Nationalist. Electricity production was in shambles. As was the whole infrastructure. The new government, led by Eddie Fenech Adami, knew electricity had to be a priority if Malta were to move forward.

A new power station was planned for Delimara (even though it was not promised in the 1987 PN electoral manifesto), which would in due course take over from the Marsa power station.

Up to 2012, the Delimara I power station could generate 300 megawatts of electricity. With the commissioning of the BWSC plant in late 2012, electricity generation in Delimara was augmented by nearly an additional 200 megawatts.

Muscat should know better about electricity generation in Malta. He should know that all major generation and distribution projects in the electricity field carry the mark of Nationalist governments.

The Marsa underground power station was inaugurated by prime minister George Borg Olivier on December 5, 1953 following the signing of a contract, in October 1959 by Enrico Mizzi, then prime minister of Malta, for the provision by Westinghouse Electrical International of an electric generation system donated to our country under the Marshall Aid.

The second phase of the electricity generation development was realised between the years 1962 and 1971 by two Nationalist administrations.

This administration did not add a single megawatt to our electricity production

In September 1963, Borg Olivier entered an agreement with the World Bank for a loan towards the construction of a brand new power station in Marsa, which he inaugurated by in February 1966.

The only development under three different Labour administrations, between 1971 and 1987, was the installation of three second-hand turbines that were brought over from Palermo and two boilers which had been bought from the UK.

The turbines dated back to 1953 and were of the same type as the ones in our underground power station and were due for decommissioning.

This was an exercise in financial stupidity because the dismantling of these turbines, their transport to Malta, refurbishing and commissioning cost the government of the day twice the price of the brand new turbines bought in the early 1960s.

Those were also the years when the Labour government turned to burning coal for electricity production with the resultant pollution in the Ħamrun/Blata l-Bajda and Cottonera areas.

With the development of the Delimara plant by the Fenech Adami government, the Marsa power station was again converted to the use of oil, filters were installed and more environmentally-friendly low sulphur fuel oil was imported.

The present administration could only switch off the Marsa power station because the previous Nationalist administration commissioned the BWSC plant and because the interconnector project was laid between Malta and Sicily and joined to the European electricity grid.

Together these two projects can generate about 400 megawatts of electricity.

This administration did not add a single megawatt to our electricity production. And it will take a few more months, if not years, before the Labour administration will be able to boast of enhancing the country’s electricity production.

Instead of celebrating the switching off the Marsa power station, Muscat and Mizzi should hide their face in shame because they not only did not deliver on their promise but also lowered the electricity tariffs not because of something they realised but because they found a new BWSC power plant built to high European environmental and efficiency standards, using low sulphur fuel oil and saving Enemalta €1 million every week, enough to make up for the lowering of the tariffs.

Mizzi’s two years as minister of energy is a story of fiascos. Since his time as chief information officer at Enemalta in the early 2000s, he does not seem to have learnt much.

He was the person behind the Labour energy promises. He promised the lowering of electricity tariffs to go hand in hand with the commissioning of a gas-fired power station.

He insisted that Enemalta was on the verge of bankruptcy and, still, the corporation, now a company, found enough millions of euros to cut electricity tariffs.

He, or they, promised that Enemalta will not be privatised. Yet, they sold a third of it to the Chinese. He, or they, promised that the Enemalta employees will keep their conditions. Ask these workers whether they still enjoy what they had before.

The latest is that Mizzi is embroiled in an oil hedging disaster with an Azeri company that cost the Maltese people €14 million in losses. But for Mizzi he did nothing wrong and would do the same thing again.

These are dangerous politicians who climb the political ladder fast and who think of themselves as being almighty. However, they are the ones who make most mistakes. They think they can do nothing wrong. These are the same people who promised transparency before the last general election.

The Labour Party should thank its lucky stars that it inherited a brand new BWSC electricity plant and a brand new interconnector. Without such facilities we would be without electricity as had happened in the days of the Dom Mintoff/Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici administrations.

Joe Zahra is a former newspaper editor.

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