Business owners around Malta are losing patience as the country suffers repeated power cuts in different localities, some lasting for upwards of 15 hours.
Those depending on refrigeration are particularly vulnerable, with each power cut potentially leading to the loss of thousands of euros’ worth of product.
The kicker, according to one butcher in the badly hit Ħaż-Żebbuġ, is that Enemalta, Malta’s sole power distributor, is not informing customers when the power has come back.
“We lost power at around 6pm yesterday, shortly before closing time,” he tells WhosWho.mt.
He explains that when the power was cut, he told his team to refrain from opening any freezers: “What was in was in, what was out was out.”
Before leaving, he put what little meat he could fit inside a small fridge, and left the rest on display, checking back during the night to see if it had come back.
“We turned everything off from the mains,” he says, “as if the electricity comes back with a surge it could fry our appliances, causing even more damage.”
“I woke up at midnight to come check. Nothing. I came again at 1am. Nothing again. To add insult to injury, I’ve been told that power came back at 1.20am, just after I last checked, but at that point I was on my way home to sleep. And this morning, of course, we had to throw some meat away.”
He says that had he simply been informed when power was restored, it would have prevented both a lot of stress and uncertainty, and waste of products.
Meanwhile, a pharmacy in Mosta, another town badly hit by the power cuts, says that certain products, like vaccines and insulin, need to be refrigerated, making the repeated cuts potentially dangerous for those who need them.
The biggest issue in terms of operations, however, was the inability to access the Pharmacy of Your Own Choice (PYOC) system of free medicines.
“We couldn’t get into the system, so we couldn’t issue medicines,” she say. “We were forced to tell people, some of whom might have needed it urgently, to wait until tomorrow or purchase non-subsidised versions of the medication.”
As Malta swelters in record-breaking heat, the impact of frequent power cuts has drawn criticism from several business associations, with the Chamber of SMEs demanding compensation for those affected and the Malta Chamber of Commerce describing the country as being “in a nosedive”.
