I first entered Marsa ‘A’ power station, better known as Ta’ Ċejlu, at the age of 17 in summer 1962 after I finished a three-year general course in engineering at Ħamrun Technical School.

On my first day, I arrived at the main gate from Fishermen Street and told the security guard that I wanted to meet the chief engineer as I was assigned for three months training there. He told me to go through the entrance tunnel cut in solid rock where I was met by a messenger who was waiting for me to guide me to the chief engineer’s office situated behind the control room.

After my brief meeting, I was introduced to the mechanical fitter who led me to the workshop and immediately gave me my first job: to cut a piece of about one inch from the hundreds of boiler tubes on the lathe with a parting tool which I completed one after another for quite some time. The tubes were later used to re-tube one of the steam boilers.

I was then assigned with a boilermaker to start the re-tubing, beginning with the steam drum which I had to enter from a small manhole that was still hot after shutdown as was the furnace in which we had to change the insulation bricks in a hotter environment. In those three months I practised different trades, including that of electrician, according to the training programme.

The Marsa ‘A’ power station, which was installed in the galleries excavated in solid rock at the base of Jesuits’ Hill, was inaugurated on December 5, 1953. This generated electricity at three phases 50 cycles. This power station, better known as the “underground station”, was totally closed down in September 1994.

The Government should seriously consider developing the Marsa underground station into a museum, possibly with European Union funding.

It is a pity that no government ever thought of turning the Pinto power station, where I started my career with the then Malta Electricity Board in 1965.

At Corradino too there is an underground power station equipped with diesel engines, which Enemalta Corporation inherited from the British Admiralty and which could also be transformed into a museum.