ARMS has been giving headaches to the Administration and the consumer ever since it took over the management of the customer care and billing functions of Enemalta and the Water Services Corporation.
But the situation now seems to have deteriorated even further, with the Government going so far as to call for the resignation of the company’s chief executive officer. Last night it was announced that the newly appointed board of directors had suspended him.
As if the considerable delay in the computation and mailing of bills to consumers is not enough, some 3,000 people received reduced energy benefit vouchers for this month. An internal investigation into the matter is now underway.
Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi gives the impression that he is on the ball in his field of play. He dominated the first two weeks of the election campaign with his exposition of his party’s plan to pilot a project that would, he argued, bring down the energy and water rates.
That remains his, and his party’s, number one challenge. But a stiff ancillary challenge is the need to revamp ARMS. The acronym stands for Automated Revenue Management Services. Automated it may be, but efficient it is certainly not.
It is frequently in the news for inefficiency but it has recently been catapulted into the front pages with news that a supervisor is being investigated for using customers’ money to pay his own bills.
The amount involved is small, unlike that in fraud case at the VAT department some years ago. Attempts at fraud in companies or corporations of such size are not unusual, which is why it is important for companies handling a constant flow of money to have reliable internal controls.
Improvements in service were made at ARMS since its disastrous start, but the level of service is still far from acceptable. There are consumers who have been waiting for their water and electricity bills for more than seven months. When they ring up customer care, they are told they are not alone in the queue.
This is a great shame on a company that was meant to speed up the service, and the new minister definitely has a difficult task in hand.
It is debatable whether he will manage to bring down the cost of energy and water, but why should it be so difficult to bring about the kind of efficiency the consumer expects from ARMS?
The Government says it has already “launched a review of its operations and the first cases of abuses have already emerged”. Judging by the way the sentence is worded, the Government seems to be expecting more abuses to emerge. This is the last thing the company needs.
After stating the obvious – i.e., that energy bills were and continue to be a burden on families and businesses – the Government goes on to argue, correctly, that “therefore, at the very least, we need to ensure a high-level of customer care and efficiency and the highest level of transparency and accountability in the management of the people’s funds”.
It is one thing to expect internal controls to be in place. The difficulty lies in ensuring these operate at the optimum level.
What the consumer expects is a swift overhaul of the company and a resumption of a service that would at least be as efficient as that the country had when billing was in the hands of the Water Services Corporation.