Restaurant owners in the Three Cities and Sliema have spoken of their frustration at the recent power cuts, while arguing the outages are hampering Malta’s aspirations of becoming a destination for high-value tourism.
Areas of Vittoriosa, Cospicua and Sliema were among scores to go dark between Monday and Tuesday as outages left entire neighbourhoods without electric lighting and air conditioning.
Sliema has suffered repeated outages in recent days, including a two-hour power cut on the hottest day in July, covering the busy area surrounding Ferries.
Donald Caligari Conti, owner of well-known Vittoriosa restaurant Tal-Petut, which specialises in traditional Maltese food, said customers had left the restaurant on Monday night amid a lack of air conditioning and lighting.
And with card payment systems unavailable due to the outage, “getting paid was a miracle”, the restaurateur said.
“Business has been really bad,” said Caligari Conti, stressing that “a lot” of clients had cancelled bookings for Tuesday night, leaving him unsure whether to open the restaurant.
“I’ve been calling [state energy supplier] Enemalta for more than 12 hours, but I’ve had no response. I’m at a loss,” he said yesterday. “This is costing us thousands of euros”.
Turning to authorities’ response to the outages, he complained that “nobody is accountable; I don’t care what [Energy Minister] Miriam Dalli says about the Nationalist Party 13 years ago – I’m here now… excuses don’t pay the bills”.
The minister told journalists on Monday that the outages had been caused by extreme temperatures and record demand for electricity, while claiming that the PN had underinvested in the grid while in government preceding the 2013 general election.
Highlighting that power cuts now seemed to be a regular occurrence during periods of high temperatures, Caligari Conti described the experience as “getting kicked every summer”.
“I’ve had it, I want to close the business,” he said, adding that with his wife having taken over the day-to-day running of the restaurant, he was trying to convince her to close up shop.
Outages continued in parts of the country on Tuesday night, with the Enemalta map on Wednesday morning showing power cuts in Mqabba and Naxxar.
Exhausted staff and ‘spiralling’ costs
Adrian Hili, who founded Michelin Bib Gourmand award-winning fresh fish restaurant Terrone, said while the Vittoriosa eatery had not suffered a lengthy outage on Monday night, a resulting power surge later that night had damaged two fridges, taking them out of action.
Meanwhile, his staff were exhausted after spending a night at home without sleep, he said.
Stressing that the recent experience seemed to be an annual one, he called the yearly power cuts “very frustrating, and there doesn’t seem to be much coordination from authorities. It seems like a knee-jerk reaction every year”.
He added that with the costs of running a restaurant “spiralling”, the cost of a lost day or two could be significant.
Hili stressed that the kinds of power cuts seen in recent days were “not becoming of a first-world country”, while expressing doubts in Malta’s appeal as a high-quality tourism destination should the outages continue.
‘The timing is terrible’
Hammett’s restaurants founder Chris Hammett said his Gastro Bar eatery in Sliema had been badly hit during the recent outages affecting the locality.
“The cuts affected sales in a very big way,” he said, describing them as having reduced “drastically – people don’t like to sit in the dark and heat”.
Hammett noted that with restaurants typically operating on low profit margins, losses in trade were “devastating” to the sector, and that with the tourist season in full swing and Malta “overloaded with people”, the “timing is terrible”.
The restaurateur added that the recent power cut had been especially frustrating after he and five other businesses joined together to fork out around €120,000 for a substation when opening their businesses, to ensure an adequate power supply.
While his other Sliema establishment, Hammett’s Monastik, managed to retain power supply due to being located within a hotel, the electricity did not extend to air conditioning or electric ovens due to the hotel’s generator needing to balance supply to the entire building. “Even if we don’t have an extractor, we can’t operate,” he said.
He added that although Malta wanted to attract high-value tourism, the recent cuts were not providing the experience needed for such a clientele. “It’s not good for the image of the country; it’s highly embarrassing”.
‘Upgrades did not keep pace’
The Malta Chamber said yesterday that it was “seriously concerned” by the outages being reported across the country.
While acknowledging that increased demand placed additional strain on energy infrastructure, it emphasised that such demands were “predictable” in view of Malta’s increased tourist population and climate change.
However, it was “evident that the upgrades and forward planning did not keep pace”, the chamber said.
“These frequent disruptions are increasingly disrupting economic activity, daily operations and quality of life, ultimately undermining operational reliability and eroding confidence in the country’s infrastructure”, it said.
“This leads to frustration, inefficiencies, lost productivity, and growing uncertainty for businesses. It is evident that the investment carried out was not enough.”
Urging the government to “act with urgency and resolve”, the chamber emphasised that addressing the issue was “essential to safeguard economic resilience, maintain competitiveness, and protect the quality of life of residents and the sustainability of business activity”.
Prime Minister Robert Abela offered an “unconditional” apology for the outages on Monday, while pointing to climate change-derived temperature increases and logistical challenges addressing “decades” of underinvestment.
He described government work on the grid in recent years as “unprecedented”.
