The Malta Resources Authority yesterday bared its teeth to gas supplier Easygas, warning it of a €25,000 fine if it fails to return the 1,937 cylinders belonging to its rival Liquigas, plus a daily €600 fine until it complies.
The ultimatum was given in an official letter filed in the civil court, after Easygas refused to return the cylinders following a previous order issued last week.
Liquigas claims Easygas has a hoard of more than 6,000 of its cylinders in its compound.
Easygas admitted to the authority last week that it had 1,937 Liquigas cylinders in its possession while the 30 distributors between them declared they had 4,520 Liquigas cylinders. These amount to more than 6,400 cylinders and tallies with the amount Liquigas is saying it has missing. But according to Joe Attard, a director of the Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises – GRTU, which represents the distributors, the 4,500 cylinders in his members’ possession were “a day’s working stock” and were “completely independent” of the 6,000 cylinders that Liquigas is claiming were being hoarded by its rival.
A spokesman for the MRA said it was still investigating where the distributors were storing their empty cylinders to establish whether the declared stock was true. To this effect, MRA inspectors yesterday paid surprise visits on the distributors’ houses to see whether they had more cylinders than declared.
This irked the GRTU, with Mr Attard claiming the authority was being strong with the weak instead of with Easygas. He said he was calling a meeting for distributors this morning to express their disgust at the way the authority was treating them.
But the MRA spokesman defended the inspections, saying they were needed for verification purposes, in the same way as inspectors had done with the two suppliers.
The problem has its origins in January when Easygas entered the market and started accepting empty yellow, green and brown Liquigas cylinders in exchange for its new grey ones. It did this so that consumers could switch suppliers at no extra cost instead of having to give their cylinders back to Liquigas, which was only giving them a full refund on the deposit on presentation of a receipt.
Liquigas is in court with Easygas to demand the return of the cylinders.
Easygas did not reply to a request for comments.