PN says households are being overcharged by up to €600 by ARMS

Rebecca Iversen Some Maltese households are being over-charged anywhere between €6 and €600 by ARMS, contrary to the governments claims of lower tariffs, the Nationalist Party claimed yesterday.

PN Deputy Leader David Agius said the party had analysed 100 electricity and water bills from members of the public, with examples of households being overcharged by ARMS. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Agius called on the government to commit to an investigation in order to give a rebate to those households who have been overcharged, at least by the end of the year.

The Malta Independent has reported extensively on the ARMS billing issues.

“Of those bills, 80 per cent were found to have been overcharged by anywhere between €6 and €600 in one year,” said Agius. “The initial examination of ARMS bills covered 2015, 2016 and 2017 and clearly disproved the government’s claims of having reduced water and electricity bills.”

PN Executive Committee member Mark Anthony Sammut explained yesterday how the frequency with which ARMS issues invoices has a direct effect on the bill.

The Malta Independent has written several articles regarding ARMS invoices being issued every two months, and inconsistent consumption of electricity and water meaning that families are being overcharged for their actual consumption.

PN leader Adrian Delia recently called on the public to bring their invoices to Dar Centrali if they believe they had been overcharged.

The frequency with which ARMS issues invoices has a direct and material effect on the overall bill. As things stand, the first 2,000 units consumed per household are charged at 10c5, the next 4,000 units at 13c, the next 4,000 units at 16c, the next 10,000 units at 34c and any more units consumed after that are charged at 60c.

This translates into ARMS dividing up the units charged at their respective rates by 365 days. The 2,000 units at the lowest rate of 10c5 are divided into 365 days, giving a household a maximum of 5,479 a day at 10c5. The same process is carried out for each of the bands at their respective rates. Since people have begun receiving bills every two months, the quotas are being chopped up with them. A billing period covering 60 days gives 328 units at 10c5. A bill covering a four month period, say 128 days, would give you 701 units at 10c5.

Sammut noted that from the 100 invoices the party had received, the period covered by an ARMS invoice varied from one month to two months to twoand-a-half months, with some being unchanged (every six months, as before).

Sammut referred to some of the cases analysed by the party, with the worst being a family of five. Due to frequent billing, this family had been over-charged in the 34c band to the extent of a whopping €580. Another household of two pensioners had, in the course of a year, been overcharged by €45. Unlike these cases, Sammut referred to a household which had not been charged as frequently as others – a household that was still being billed every six months – and the additional charge was only €6.

Local PN councillor Michael Briguglio spoke of the explosion in the number of reports about ARMS from the media, the setting-up of a group called ‘Up in Arms’, the reactions of economists and a court case initiated in 2016 by two consumers against ARMS for ‘illegal’ billing.

The government insists that bills have fallen by 25 per cent between 2012 and 2017. In a statement, the Energy Ministry argued that the PN had spoken at length about a billing system that was introduced in 2009, under a PN administration. It said that, in 2012, bills were issued 6.1 times a year, ie an average of one bill every two months, and that in 2017 this fell to 5.7 times a year.

The difference between 2012 and 2017, the Ministry said, was that rates fell by 25 per cent. It said that the number of families who did not exceed the lowest tariff band (2,000 units a year) rose by 4.3 per cent compared with 2012.

The Ministry said that, despite this, the government had already said that it would improve the billing system.