Gas distributors yesterday blocked the gate to the Qajjenza bottling plant, preventing supplier Liquigas from collecting and distributing cylinders with its own trucks.

Liquigas Malta has the right both to ensure that its clients are well served and to protect its commercial interests

The distributors said the supplier was taking gas to areas such as Msida and Sliema in breach of an agreement signed with the government in 1992 giving them territorial exclusivity.

Liquigas hit back, saying it had been forced to do so in the customers’ best interests following several complaints of bad service being provided by the distributor covering this locality.

It asked the authorities to ensure its legal right to distribute cylinders is protected, after an attempt to take gas to the Sliema area was yesterday blocked by the distributors’ action.

The action was held in protest against a legal notice issued by the government in October 2008 which effectively opened up the distribution of gas to anyone with a Malta Resources Authority permit. This, the distributors claim, was in breach of the 1992 agreement and the new distributors were now taking over their sales.

Joe Attard, a director at the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises – GRTU, which represents the distributors, said that despite several months of discussions and the closure of a consultation period on a number of amendments proposed by the government, no decision had yet been taken.

He said both gas suppliers, Liquigas and Easygas, were using their trucks to distribute gas. However, an agreement was reached with Easygas last Saturday under which distributors will supply customers with the grey Easygas cylinders. No such agreement has been reached with Liquigas.

Liquigas said its trucks had gone to Sliema last week because of a number of complaints it had received from consumers about the service they were receiving from a distributor covering this area. It said it wanted to improve the quality of service.

“Liquigas Malta has the right both to ensure that its clients are well served and to protect its commercial interests,” it said, adding that it continued to supply its cylinders to gas distributors yesterday morning despite the trucks also being loaded with its competitor’s cylinders.

Since the distributors were staging a protest, no sale of gas cylinders took place yesterday and it was not known whether sales would again be disrupted today.

While two of the gas trucks continued to block the gate at Qajjenza, the rest of the distributors embarked on a noisy carcade all the way to Valletta, driving past Auberge de Castille sounding their horns while a Cabinet meeting was under way.

As several members of the police gathered Castille Place, the distributors proceeded down Ġlormu Cassar Avenue and made their way back out of Valletta. In 1992, Enemalta’s Gas Division, which was later privatised and sold to Liquigas Malta, had signed an agreement with every distributor granting them a licence for a specific area, which is automatically renewed every year.

This gave them territorial exclusivity to sell gas cylinders in the community, which has now been compromised, they argue, by the distribution licences issued to the two suppliers.

One of the clauses of the latest agreement stipulates that distributors are only to sell gas cylinders provided by Liquigas but it was shot down just before Christmas when the Commission for Fair Trading ruled that they could not be bound to sell gas of only one supplier.

Mr Attard said the GRTU was demanding a decision from the government on the amendments to the legal notice issued “behind our backs”.