Consumers who used tampered smart meters are being given a six-week deadline to regularise their position or face he consequences, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi said this evening.

Speaking on Dissett, Dr Mizzi said Enemalta has been receiving a ‘phenomenal’ number of tip-offs about theft of electricity since the smart meters scandal was revealed last week.

Some of the tip-offs related to the 1,000 smart-meters which the authorities knew about, but there were many other cases, which showed that this was a widespread problem.

Asked if people were owning up, Dr Mizzi said a large number of people had inquired about the mechanism for those who had used tampered meters to come forward.

He said Enemalta and the police were exchanging information every day and he expected the police to prosecute more people. Three have been taken to court to date.

The minister said the former government had turned a blind eye to theft of electricity. Enemalta used to have a compliance unit aimed at combating theft but it was disbanded in 2010 and 17 workers were redeployed to other sections. Then theft of electricity mushroomed in 2011 and 2012 and amounted to €30m a year, an increase of €6m every year. The figure of €30m, he said, amounted to total theft of electricity and not necessarily the theft made from the 1,000 tampered meters since there were various forms of theft.

He said the compliance unit was disbanded because Enemalta had claimed at the time it was no longer needed because technology made remote monitoring possible. The new government in May set up a new unit to tackle theft.

He said that Enemalta was setting a six-week deadline for those who had used tampered meters to regularise their position and also to give information on who had given them the tampered meters. The six weeks start on Monday.

He said that of the tampered meters identified so far, some 750 were single phase meters and 240 were three-phase, of which 200 were businesses.