During the recent Xarabank debate on TVM between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, the former flagged a utility bill, which either indicated zero charge or zero consumption of water and electricity.

A utility bill can never indicate a zero charge for the simple reason that such a bill must always include a “service charge”.

I have checked the service charge of 11 utility bills of different accounts, having single-phase meters; it varies from four to 50 per cent of the charges covering consumption of water and electricity.

The average service charge resulting from this exercise was 25 per cent of the bill.

In the light of the aforesaid, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Labour Party, if returned to power, would decrease the utility bill simply by doing away with the service charge. ARMS Ltd say the service charge represents the water and electricity meters’ rent, which they calculate at a specific rate by the number of days constituting the period for which the bill is issued.

Most probably, the service charge, disguised as a rent, actually covers the company’s overhead expenses and the wages of its employees. Hence, if ARMS Ltd educates its customers how to obtain their utility bill online, it would be able to do away with a considerable number of its employees, including all its meter readers and would also reduce its overhead expenses.

In this way, the party in power would be able to reduce the utility bill by at least 25 per cent of the consumption charge, thus achieving what Labour leader Joseph Muscat has been promising ad nauseam, albeit he never disclosed by what percentage he intended to reduce these bills.