Do our commentators have to be so binary, so either / or? Why is it, for example, that the 0 or the 1 which proclaims the absolution of Joseph and Michelle Muscat by the conclusions of the Egrant inquiry, do not modulate their emphatic triumphalism by pointing out that the primary witnesses in the inquiry pro Joseph Muscat are all suspicious, shady characters - some of them even in prison or facing prison sentences? Or that the inquiry began a year after the Panama Papers revealed the presence of Egrant, Hearnville and Tillgate, set up days after the 2013 PL election victory? Or that our Prime Minister - the accused - was able to choose the terms of the inquiry? Which may have meant that the magistrate had his hands tied re the scope of the inquiry? For example - why were the terms of the inquiry couched the way they were? Why wasn't it a priority to categorically find out who Egrant belonged to? That would have put paid to any doubts whatsoever. That would have justified the jubilant proclamations of innocence. Why do these commentators not look at the entire context in which the Egrant inquiry played out? Why do these commentators not discuss the ramifications of the seven defendants (including our Prime Minister), delaying the start of another inquiry instigated by Simon Busuttil more than a year ago? Not least, the recent appeal of some of the defendants and our Attorney General - our Legal Defender of the Republic - against the judgement of the Constitutional Court in favour of Simon Busuttil, that Judge Mizzi should recuse himself? Incidentally Judge Mizzi reaches retirement age in November 2018, as declared in our Parliament by no other than Justice Minister Owen Bonnici. Why is it so important that Judge Mizzi oversees this inquiry, even when he is about to retire? It seems to me as though the Maltese toxic disease of political partisanship has infected even our commentators. Do these think of the responsibility they have towards the greater good of our country? Do they really want to support PEPs like Keith Schembri or Konrad Mizzi who have admitted owning Panama companies Hearnville or Tillville, within days of PL winning the 2013 general election? Who did Egrant belong to? Why isn't the Prime Minister being held accountable for the lack of any action, for the institutional meltdown, even if it has not been verified that Egrant belonged to Michelle Muscat? Do they understand that prime ministers, ministers, PEP all over the world... have resigned for far less, soon after their names were revealed by the Panama Papers? Is it because they do not understand that political accountability demands a much lower bar for evidence than a court of law? Or is it that they have totally succumbed to the disease of political partisanship to become propaganda mouthpieces of a brazen corruption of our democracy? The spinning of a universe of alternative explanations is certainly making me feel dizzy. I wonder, is there another Cambridge Analytica in the shadows, advising the government on propaganda techniques? Isn't it chilling that some elements of the fourth pillar of democracy help with the spinning?
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When I watched Joseph Muscat give us his version of the conclusions of the Egrant magisterial inquiry, I should have, for all intents and purposes, felt sympathy as he described the effect on his family, especially his children. Instead I was left completely stone cold, even though my family and I had been through a similar experience. My youngest was 5 years old when a precautionary garnishee order was applied to our bank account and my salary. He was with me in the checkout queue and a mountain of shopping in my trolley, when I had to phone my bank because my card didn't work. I had to educate him about how a justice system works. He was under the misapprehension that going to court meant there was a chance I could end up in prison. I spent two years in court. Five months without a bank account and my salary frozen on the minimum wage. I tried to make Arms re calculate our bill on the correct tariff. I wrote to Joseph Muscat and the then Minister for Energy, Konrad Mizzi. To no avail. That day in August 2013 was the day the bottom of my world fell out. We had done absolutely nothing wrong and yet, even though I didn't have to attend Criminal Court, I did feel, as my son correctly perceived, just like a criminal. All I did was insist that we pay for our utilities on the primary residence tariff, not the secondary residence tariff. It put a huge strain on our family life as we pinched our way to the end of the month, every month. Joseph Muscat, on the other hand, made eunuchs of the police, the FIAU, the MFSA, the Attorney General; he kept Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri in office, even when it was revealed that they had Panama companies. It was obvious that there needed to be an investigation into the very serious allegations against him. Like there should have been investigations into all the serious allegations against other politicians. But there he was on my television screen, making it seem as though he should never have been investigated. I have touched upon this politician / ordinary person divide before in other blogs in Malta Tenant Support. It is a reflection of the automatic reverence with which most of us look at politicians, as if they are the deities and we are the ordinary mortals. We have allowed them to think that they are gods when really their sole raison d’etre is to serve the public, without fear or favour. After all, this is what they say they will do in their oath of office. It doesn’t help that we have members of parliament from only two political parties* in our Parliament and have done so for decades. This has created a toxic political partisanship where you are either red or blue. It’s binary – if you’re not red, then you must be blue, and vice versa. It’s been a vicious descent into the current poisonous situation, the flimsy checks and balances on the Executive, long having given way. It is depressing to see this reverence even in well educated people – there is no room in their minds for criticising ‘their' party, no matter how serious the shortcomings. That would be seen as a victory for ‘the other side’. It is an ugly impasse which breeds hate upon hate, intolerance upon intolerance. Do they understand, I wonder, the implications of Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Chief of Staff for the Prime Minister, Keith Schembri, having set up Panama companies one day after taking their oath of office? Do they understand the utterly cold cynicism of PEPs setting up secret companies in order to hide their money within days of being elected? That’s right - they set up these secret companies to hide their money. If it hadn’t been for the Panama Papers, we would be none the wiser. Please don’t believe the ridiculous stories of family trusts and all the other nonsense. It’s as clear as the light of day. This is why there are rules against politically exposed persons setting up these financial structures. Do they not make the link with Azeri Socar overcharging us on our fuel by 40 million dollars every year? Or the sale of our health care system to Vitals? Or the sale of our preciously finite pristine land to Sadeen to build a ‘university’? Is it possible that they don’t see the link between the above and the setting up of opaque financial structures within days of PL winning the 2013 general election? Or do they understand this but admitting it would mean that ‘their' side has lost and ‘the other' side has won? Yes, it’s that infantile. One final point. The aftermath of the Egrant magisterial inquiry is a prime example of how this toxic partisanship is creating more disunity and exposing the dysfunction of our institutional checks and balances. The police did not investigate a single Maltese person revealed to have a Panama company. This inquiry was ordered by the accused himself. Joseph Muscat decided when to ask Magistrate Aaron Bugeja to set up the inquiry. As it happens, this was 13 months after the Panama Papers were published. Whoever Egrant belonged to had 13 months to get rid of the evidence. Joseph Muscat decided on the terms of the inquiry, he presented the conclusions to us in a perfectly orchestrated press conference. We then have Pilatus Bank, Mossack Fonseca and Nexia BT. The owner of Pilatus Bank was arrested in the States and faces 125 years in prison for money laundering. The MFSA recently asked the EBA to rescind the licence for Pilatus Bank. Mossack Fonseca was shut down. Nexia BT is still open, even though it set up companies in tax havens for PEPs. We have Maria Efimova contradicting Daphne Caruana Galizia in her testimony. We don't have Daphne Caruana Galizia to comment on this. What did Karl Cini say when / if asked who the individual in his email to Mossack Fonseca was? The forgery - who forged the signature? Isn't it the nature of these financial structures that they are difficult to attribute ownership to? With all this in mind, how can we trust the outcome of the inquiry, no matter how excellent the magistrate is? I also wonder whether these people read the conclusions. The two conclusions at the end of the report begin with ‘Ma nstabx’ (It wasn’t found). This is not a guilty or innocent ‘verdict’. An inquiry is a compilation of evidence from which a magistrate draws conclusions and makes recommendations. And yet we are treated to triumphant jubilation when not proven does not necessarily mean innocent. We also have the angry PL supporters who label the sceptics PN supporters, who jeer and crack jokes at the expense of people they say are from ‘the other' side. They do not see the context of this inquiry in its entirety: the fact that the inquiry was tainted from day 1 or that Joseph Muscat and six other defendants are doing their utmost to delay another inquiry instigated by Simon Busuttil more than a year ago. Is it that Joseph Muscat is uneasy with an inquiry of which he has not dictated the terms? Why is it that we don't see that the inquiry should never have even taken place? Instead of entrenching ourselves behind PN or PL, we should have all made sure that Joseph Muscat dismissed Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, that fateful day in 2016 it was revealed that these owned Panama companies. The fact that he didn't has only cast doubt on Joseph Muscat himself. It shouldn't only be the sceptics - the small group of neither PN nor PL - who see this. It should be ALL of us holding the political class to account, without fear or favour, ALL the time. It's down to us - the collective us. Politicians will certainly not uphold their oaths of office if they know that we will let them get away with behaviour like this. So they will keep on laughing all the way to the dodgy tax haven as the frothing at the mouth partisan provides a smokescreen for them to be able to do this. *(I’m ignoring the PD anomaly – they were elected under a PN ticket and it remains to be seen whether other political parties will go down this route again. It did show us, however, that this is a way to get round the prohibitive impossibility of electing a third political party to our parliament.)
So,
the state ignores categorical proof that a consumer of electricity has been overcharged by €152.92 on their electricity bill, in contravention of the Electricity Supply Regulations which stipulate that the quotas of units at the cheaper rates are annual quotas, not two monthly quotas; the state overcharges us when we were tenants by €3309.84 over 35 months and ignores my request to re calculate the cost of our consumption on the tariff meant for primary residences, not secondary residences. With the result that I have to attend court once a month for 2 years to see who was responsible for the overcharge - my landlord or I. For the first few months of this action, we endure a precautionary garnishee order on our bank account and my salary; the state does a Pontius Pilate and blames the Secretariat for Catholic Education for underpaying me by circa €20 000, in breach of EU law. When it is the state which is responsible for the approval of church school teachers, when it is the state which decreed that I was to start at the bottom of the Teacher Salary Scale and when it is the state that pays the salary of church school teachers; the Secretariat for Catholic Education quotes the 2013 MUT / MEDE agreement as reason for not paying me arrears for the first 3 years. Does it understand that this is based on the 2002 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, which is of dodgy legality? Also, in my case, it doesn't apply because of EU Article 7(4) Reg. 492/2011: • ‘Any clause of a collective or individual agreement or of any other collective regulation concerning eligibility for employment, remuneration and other conditions of work or dismissal shall be null and void in so far as it lays down or authorizes discriminatory conditions in respect of workers who are nationals of the other Member States’ my employer - basically, the Church - disregards how its practice of ignoring prior teaching experience for teachers who moved sector pre 2015 is in breach of the Universal declaration of fundamental human rights and colludes with the state to deprive me of equal pay for equal work. This is Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests. There's more but I think I'll stop here. Please note that it is not just the money that exercises me no end. It's the casualness by which the state, employers, a monopoly utility billing company steals WITH IMPUNITY from the ordinary person, trying to live their life as best they can. The IMPUNITY with which Maltese constitutional law, EU law, fundamental human rights... are breached. The casualness is obscene. The entitlement to your money, the callousness by which they conduct their wars of attrition... Also, please note that this behaviour is universal. It is not aimed at just me. These breaches of law, of all jurisdictions, are systemic, institutionalised. Which brings me to my complete incomprehension that the people - the ordinary people - stand for this arrogant maladministration. If only people could see the power we have when we act as a collective. If only people would see that we have to step up. How much more circumvention of the maladministration can we take? Is this what we want for Malta's next generation? And the powers that be continue to get away with gross maladministration because the people do not understand the numbers. So they are easily led into thinking that the complainants are inventing stories so as to discredit 'their' government. The truth of the matter is that both PN and PL are to blame for this dysfunctional billing scheme. Both PN and PL have stolen thousands from hapless consumers of electricity and water. Both PN and PL have made utility bill payments a political football.
What should happen is that people should have faith in the utility billing company. ESPECIALLY if the utility billing company is the sole, state owned utility billing company. I have spent hundreds of man hours calculating my bills because I do not trust Arms. Let me stress this point - I have done the job of the sole, state owned utility billing company because I could see the glaring mistakes from a mile away. And I was correct to not trust Arms. Every time I checked their bills, I found a mistake. When we were tenants, we were overcharged by €3309.84 on the summer residence tariff. We also endured precautionary garnishee orders on our bank account and my salary because Arms refused to re-calculate the bills on the correct tariff for people living in their primary residences. When we became homeowners, I had two bills corrected in the first year because 1) they had us down for 4 occupants instead of 5 and 2) they bulked 6 months of consumption into a period of 2 months. This last year, when we we were billed (actual) every two months, we lost out on our full annual quotas at the cheaper rates. How is it possible that people do not see the numbers? Is being numerate such a problem in Malta? What an indictment of our education system. What an indictment that we allow this state sanctioned theft from consumers of water and electricity to continue because we don't understand the numbers. From: johanna axisa1 <johannaxisa@hotmail.com> Sent: 09 July 2018 17:32 To: customercare@arms.com.mt; energy@gov.mt Subject: Re Invoice Number 25655574 FAO Mr John Attard, Arms CEO FAO Mr Joe Mizzi, Minister for Energy and Water Management Re Invoice 25655574; €497.64 I am writing to you to put on record that - over the billing period 10th March 2017 to the 9th March 2018 - our household has been overcharged by the amount of €152.91, in contravention of the Electricity Supply Regulations. I have attached an Excel spreadsheet which shows how I have come to this conclusion. I used the second page of the last 6 two monthly Arms bills to calculate the total number of units at each band charged. To my surprise, our annual consumption of 8868 units of electricity did not utilize all the quotas at the cheaper rates. We lost out on 341.22 units of electricity at €0.1298 per unit, 2005.48 units of electricity at €0.1607 per unit and we were also charged at €0.3420 per unit on 1215.01 units of electricity. We should never have paid at the €0.3420 per unit band because we did not breach the 10000 units per year, to be liable at this band, as stipulated by the Electricity Supply Regulations. Additionally, I would like to say that the cost of our electricity over the last year has ranged from €1.60 per day to €8.00 per day and from €0.12 per unit of electricity to €0.20 per unit of electricity. This is problematic - who wants to have to pay bills of €401.68 for November to January and €456.08 for January to March? These two bills - representing our electricity cost of 4 months - amount to 60% of the total annual cost of electricity for our household. We were billed for the remaining 40% of the total cost over 8 months. This is simply not tenable and will create huge problems for people with cash flow issues. Unfortunately, Arms is the sole, state owned utility billing company. Therefore, under duress and without prejudice to any legal action I may consider in the future, I enclose two cheques – one for the amount of €344.73 and the other for the overcharge of €152.91. These total to the €497.64 we were billed for the billing period 12th January, 2018 to 9th March, 2018 (invoice 25655574). I would like to think that you will carefully study the Excel spreadsheet and understand that we have indeed been overcharged. If that is the case, then please return the uncashed cheque in the amount of €152.91. I would ask you to pass on this correspondence to any authority, responsible for the overseeing of the correctness of Arms bills. I have tried to ascertain which entity is responsible, to no avail. I used the Arms online calculator to check my workings. As you no doubt know, the crux of the problem is that the billing period - in number of days - constitutes part of the algorithm for calculating the cost. So - simply put - to work out the cost of the bill, the algorithm will calculate the pro rata quota of allowances, according to this number of days. If the billing period is a year, then there would be no problem at all. But because the billing period is chopped up into 6 two monthly bills, then the pro rata quotas will not be at all sensitive to the peaks and troughs of consumption over the year. In fact, this, of course, is the reason for the lengthy disclaimer that comes with the Arms online calculator. The cost depends very much on the length of the billing period. I used the Arms online calculator to check my workings and the Arms online calculator, in fact, agrees with me, minus a discrepancy of €0.70. I have attached a screenshot of this Arms online calculation. Edit - 13/7/2018: I've narrowed the discrepancy between the Arms online calculation and my workings from €0.70 to €0.06. The dates I entered in the first version were the 9th March, 2017 to the 9th March, 2018, when in fact they should have been the 10th March, 2017 to the 9th March, 2018. The remaining €0.06 discrepancy is likely due to rounding. Finally, I would like to say that this analysis is the analysis of the cost for our household for this last year. Of course, it will differ from household to household and from year to year. The point is that it will be an exceptionally massive fluke if the cost with annual quotas were to match exactly the cost with pro rata quotas. Surely Arms needs to look at this situation urgently to ensure that consumers of electricity are not paying over the odds. Maybe a look at the UK will do the trick? When I lived in the UK, we paid a fixed amount by direct debit per month over the year (which also solves the issue of paying 60% of the annual cost over 4 months), with the understanding that there would be an adjustment at the end of the year, if needs be. I hope to hear from you soon. Yours sincerely Johanna MacRae PS Letter with cheques sent by post
Yesterday, England beat Sweden in the quarter finals of the 2018 World Cup. In Malta, the usual suspects carcaded for all their worth. Unlike Iceland - of equivalent population - Malta has never had a national team to cheer on in the World Cup. So, instead they cheer on a proxy team of their choice and behave very much as though this team was indeed their national team.
The state of our world is never perfect. Unfortunately, our world is not - and will never be - a utopia. This time round, however, I cannot summon any enthusiasm for this world football tournament. I see it as a grotesque diversion away from the increasing right wing, racist rhetoric from all over the western world. Trump, Brexit, Malta… Photographs of dead migrant children in their rescuer arms. Harrowing videos of crying migrant children, separated from their parents. Harrowing videos of parents reunited with their children after months of separation. Captains of rescue ships prosecuted for the act of rescue. Bulldozers razing Palestinian villages, replacing these with Israeli settlements. Some British / EU immigrants – aka expats – supporting Joseph Muscat’s action of closing Maltese borders to drowning refugees. Imagine there’s no country… Who are we to decide that we must wall our country from some people and not others? Why are rich migrants - able to buy EU citizenship - allowed to do so, if people fleeing what must be a horrific situation – using up all their resources to get on a flimsy boat to get to an uncertain future – are not allowed to do so? Are our consciences dead? Can we look at these images and feel nothing? How is it that we passionately care about eleven men kicking a ball on a football pitch and yet we are able to close our hearts to the images of crying or dead children? How can we – in Malta – transfer our allegiance to another country so easily and yet be immobilised in the face of such horrific inhumanity? I named this website 'The Spirit of the Law' because I am forever taken aback by how the Maltese powers that be use the letter of the law to defile its spirit. I am forever horrified by how - in Malta - the law is used - as a matter of course - to pervert the course of justice. This is not to say that this is exclusively a Maltese characteristic – it’s just that to the trained eye it is especially pervasive and brazen in Malta. Today, this blog will refer to the anomalous situation many teachers working in all Maltese schools in all sectors find themselves in. At the heart of this situation is the fact that teachers of greater teaching experience earn less than teachers of lesser teaching experience. How teachers find themselves in this situation - the whys and wherefores - is surely unimportant. It is despicable that employers quote agreements of questionable legality to justify this discrimination. I was not surprised to recently discover that one of my teachers who taught me in the early 80s earns less than I do now, even though her teaching career is longer than mine. She is two or so years away from retirement, so will never reach the top of the Teacher Salary Scale, if the current injustice is allowed to prevail. For teachers in this situation, the loss in earnings over decades is substantial. In our case, we – a family of 5 – were meant to live on 300 euro per month after rent and the Arms bill, on the incorrectly applied summer residence tariff. If I had been paid correctly, our disposable income after rent and utilities would have been about 900 euro. Can you imagine what this does to your quality of life? To the dreams and aspirations that you have for your children? The 2016 Caritas study on poverty posited that a family of 2 adults and 2 children needs a minimum of 953 euro per month to be able to live a minimum existence. This assumed that this family lived in social accommodation, with housing costs of 17 euro per month (200 euro per year). So, officially speaking, we were living in poverty. We needed three times our disposable income to be officially out of poverty. Three times - 300%. How can a worker - a tertiary educated teacher – be classed as living in poverty? If I had been paid correctly, then we would still be classed as poor but not by a margin of 300%. This is a gross breach of the fundamental human right to family life, to be treated with dignity as a human being, to be paid fairly for your labour... How can it be possible that the state propagates these breaches of fundamental human rights? How can it be possible that the state is responsible for discriminating against you and getting the benefit of your teaching experience on the cheap? Like me, there will be many other teachers in similar situations. How many teachers in this situation choose to limit their families to one or two children, when they would like more? How many pinch and squeeze their way, with great difficulty, to the end of the month? How many endure sleepless nights, worrying about how they were going to pay that unexpected bill? How many endure mental health issues? Instead of the various entities lancing the boil of this injustice once and for all, we have instead an admission that this is unjust, but only for teachers moving EU member state post 2013 or state school teacher moving state school post 2013 or teachers moving licensed school from whichever sector post 2015. The problem with resolving this injustice in such a piecemeal fashion is that you will compound the injustice for many. Teachers moving sector pre 2015, teachers moving from state school to state school pre 2013 or EU member state school to Maltese state school pre 2013 will still be discriminated against. They will continue to feel the humiliation of being regarded as second class teachers, lower tier teachers, still charged with the same duties of teachers less experienced than they, but earning less. Powers that be – bite the bullet. Do the right thing. Stop the discrimination and stop breaching the fundamental human rights of many teachers. By Jean-Marc Nattier - Sotheby's, lot.14[1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51532114 In the August of 2015 I submitted this complaint to the European Commission re the underpayment of my salary:
There followed a year of intensive correspondence between myself, the European Commission, Kevin Bonello, President of the MUT and various officials of MEDE, including Minister Evarist Bartolo and his lawyers. Many spanners were thrown in the works. This is because, in Malta, the powers that be conduct a war of attrition. They try to wear you out so that you give up and the status quo is protected. The spanners were imaginative in their scope, I’ll give them that. They were as far removed from the original spirit of EU law as is possible to be. First I was told by no other than the person heading my union that the 2013 MUT / MEDE agreement was not applicable to me because I was moving to Malta from the UK Church sector. So I produced documentary evidence to show that my UK employers were the local councils that these schools were situated in. Church schools in the UK are mostly state owned, unlike in Malta. I was then told by Mr Bonello that the 2013 MUT / MEDE agreement did not apply to me because I had moved from the UK state sector to the Maltese Church sector. In Malta, we have the anomalous situation in which the individual Church school is the employer but it is the state which approves the employment of Church school teachers, decrees the point on the Salary Scale the teacher is to be placed and pays the teacher salaries. I argued this fine point over several months. Every legalistic and nonsensical riposte was dispiriting. Clearly the Maltese contingent was not buying it. Clearly the Maltese contingent does not draw a distinction between legalese and justice. Clearly the Maltese contingent does not see that underpaying a teacher and getting the benefit of their 15 years’ teaching experience on the cheap is immoral and unjust. Clearly the Maltese contingent sees nothing wrong in the discrimination of teachers of greater teaching experience earning less than teachers of lesser teaching experience. So I decided to send my approval letter on a MEDE letterhead to the European Commission. Surely the people at the Commission would not behave as the Maltese contingent? Surely the European Commission would see that it is MEDE that has power over what salary point a Church school teacher in a Maltese church school is to be placed? My hunch was proved correct. Within a few weeks of the Commission receiving the approval letter -showing that it was MEDE that approved my appointment as Teacher of Physics, that decreed I was to be placed on Scale 9 Increment 1 and that paid my salary - I received a letter from the Commission informing me that the situation was resolved. All the legalistic mumbo jumbo was no more. Thank goodness for that. However, there is still some legalistic mumbo jumbo to endure. Basically, the Maltese contingent argued that the 2013 MUT / MEDE agreement stipulated that I was to be paid arrears from the 23rd September, 2013. I was told that I would not be receiving arrears for the years 2010 to 2013, worth circa €20 000. Because the Maltese contingent thinks that the 2013 MUT / MEDE agreement of dubious legality supersedes EU law. Because the Maltese contingent thinks that they can pay the EU teacher - whose action was the reason for the 2013 MUT / MEDE agreement - arrears before 2013. But not me. So I write to the European Commission and explain the situation. In December of last year, I also instruct my lawyer to interrupt the prescription on my case. I am quietly confident that the European Commission will come to my help again. However, if not, I will take legal action against all parties concerned. Even if it has to go before the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, I have started a Teacher Mobility support group. Just like MEDE tries to get the benefit of experienced teachers from the EU on the cheap, it does the same to teachers moving sector within Malta. In any one school all over Malta, you have teachers of lesser teaching experience earning more than teachers of greater teaching experience. The attempts of the MUT to resolve this situation have been pitiful. The 2013 Mobility Agreement, followed by the 2015 Bridging Agreement have created anomaly upon anomaly. This discrimination against teachers moving sector is clearly in breach of the 2002 Equal Pay for Equal Work Act. This is shameful. In a teacher recruitment crisis, teachers of experience are treated without regard to their dignity. They are discriminated against, taken for granted. It is a wonder that these stay on in Maltese schools, giving of their best. It is a wonder that they didn’t leave the teaching profession years ago. As you can see in the table below, our cost of electricity works out at €0.63 per day more expensive, €0.03 per unit more expensive and €230.88 per year more expensive than it should be, if Arms / Enemalta were not to be in breach of the Electricity Supply Regulations and if we were to be billed according to the full quota of cheaper units that we are due. Now, this analysis is the analysis of the cost for our household for this last year. Of course, it will differ from household to household and from year to year. The point is that it will be an exceptionally massive fluke if the cost with annual quotas were to match exactly the cost with pro rata quotas. The crux of the problem is that the billing period - in number of days - constitutes part of the algorithm for calculating the cost. So - simply put - to work out the cost of the bill, the algorithm will calculate the pro rata quota of allowances, according to this number of days. If the billing period is a year, then there would be no problem at all. But because the billing period is chopped up into 6 two monthly bills, then the pro rata quotas will not be at all sensitive to the peaks and troughs of consumption over the year. In fact, if you look at the diagram below, this, in itself, constitutes another problem. The cost of our electricity over the last year, ranges from €1.60 per day to €8.00 per day and from €0.12 per unit of electricity to €0.20 per unit of electricity. This is problematic - who wants to have to pay bills of €401.68 for November to January and €456.08 for January to March? These bills, representing our electricity cost of 4 months, amount to 60% of the the total annual cost of electricity for our household. We were billed for the remaining 40% of the total cost over 8 months. This is simply not tenable and will create huge problems for people with cash flow issues. You know what they say - lies, damned lies and statistics... Much was made in the 2013 PL electoral campaign, of the decrease in the cost of electricity, if PL were to be elected. Five years on, and I hope that this incorrect implementation of the Arms billing system will be fixed. I also hope all aspects of this catastrophic billing system will also be fixed - the Arms / tenant scam, the prepaid meters issue, the PV issue... It is so wrong that Arms continues to take advantage of its monopoly position. I also wonder what Malta puts forward as its average cost per unit of electricity for households, when asked for statistics. Our average cost per unit was 16 c per unit this year. This, when we - a household of 5 - are hardly at home, have no ac and no drier. The diagram below shows the cost of our electricity if we had been allowed our full quota of cheaper units. The cost per unit, in this case, would have been 13 c per unit. Still nothing to write home about. For our level of electricity consumption, I would say that Malta must have one of the higher electricity prices. That money is not being invested in renewable energy, from what I can see. I wonder, is it financing some Azeri and Maltese politicians instead? After years of different people shouting from every rooftop, Arms is feeling the pressure. It's not the Arms / tenant scam, however, that is getting everybody hot under the collar. Instead it's yet another example of how far away Maltese administrative policy is from being sensible, transparent and fair. As more and more Smart meters are being read remotely, many households are being billed every 2 months. Many people would welcome receiving bills more frequently so as not to be hit with a massive bill every 6 months. The Arms billing system is a stepped billing system, with the cost of your consumption increasing the more electricity you consume. This is a good idea - we need every possible incentive to reduce our consumption of electricity. Unfortunately, however, the people over at Arms have not stopped to consider that there is a clear problem with having bills issued every two months. From the Electricity Supply Regulations, these are the annual allowances at each band on the Residential Tariff: i) For every kWh of the first 2,000 kWh ..................... €0.1047; ii) For every kWh of the next 4,000 kWh ................... €0.1298; iii) For every kWh of the next 4,000 kWh ................... €0.1607; iv) For every kWh of the next 10,000 kWh ................. €0.3420; v) For every kWh of the remaining consumption ....... €0.6076. All well and good. Unfortunately, these quotas are being calculated pro rata every two month billing period. This means that periods of lower consumption will not compensate for periods of higher consumption. The spreadsheet below totals the consumption of units at the different bands for our household over the last year. I used the second page of six Arms bills to calculate the total number of units at each band. Surprise, surprise - of course, our annual consumption of 8868 units of electricity did not utilize all the quotas at the cheaper rates. We lost out on 341.22 units of electricity at €0.1298 per unit. We also lost out on 2005.48 units of electricity at €0.1607 per unit. We were also charged at €0.3420 per unit on 1215.01 units of electricity, when we should never have breached the €0.1607 per unit band. Our total consumption was 8868 units of electricity for the year. So how on earth were we charged at the €0.3420 per unit band, if we hadn't breached 10 000 units in the year? This categorically shows - black on white - that an increased frequency of billing will cost the consumer more than it should. The Electricity Supply Regulations are very clear that these quotas are annual quotas. The ONLY reason for the disclaimer on the Arms online calculator is that the frequency of the billing has an effect on the cost of the bill. A calculator can never be wrong - the algorithms calculating the cost can never be wrong. This, therefore, is an unjust manipulation of the Arms billing system to make as much money as possible from the consumer, in contravention of the Electricity Supply Regulations. Consumers are being denied their right, under law, to enjoy the full annual quotas at the cheaper rates.
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