A month after the government promised compensation to families and businesses hit by prolonged power cuts, the application process has still not been launched, according to the Nationalist Party.The PN has criticised the delay, saying application forms have yet to be published and affected households and businesses are still waiting to receive the compensation they were promised.The party singled out SMEs and self-employed workers who were forced to close, turn customers away, throw out food and other products, or deal with damaged equipment during the outages.“These are not hypothetical costs,” the PN said, pointing out that businesses still have wages, rent and bills to pay despite losing hours or days of income.The party argued that the delays could be particularly damaging for smaller businesses that rely heavily on cash flow and cannot afford to wait months for the government to establish a compensation process, assess claims and issue payments.The PN said it had previously called for compensation to be issued automatically according to clear criteria, including how long an outage lasted, damage to equipment, lost stock and sales, and whether a business was forced to close.However, the government instead said those affected by power cuts lasting more than six hours would have to apply for compensation.The PN questioned how those affected could do so when, a month later, the necessary forms had still not been made available.It argued that Enemalta and the government already hold data showing where outages occurred and how long they lasted, meaning that compensation should be issued automatically wherever that information is sufficient to identify those affected.For losses that cannot be established from existing data, such as damaged equipment, discarded stock or lost sales, the party called for a straightforward mechanism allowing businesses to declare their losses and seek additional compensation.“It is not enough for the Government to say that it will provide compensation. The compensation must reach those who need it – and it must reach them immediately,” the PN said.The party also called for families who endured prolonged outages to receive the promised payments without further delays, while warning that businesses could face more immediate financial consequences from having to wait.“A small business that was forced to close cannot wait months to recover part of what it lost because of the Government’s inefficiency,” it said.The PN is now calling on the government to immediately publish details of the compensation process, minimise the bureaucracy involved and begin issuing payments to affected households and businesses.“The very least the Government can do, after failing to provide a reliable electricity service, is ensure that the losses suffered by families and businesses are compensated fully, fairly and, above all, promptly,” the party concluded.Lovin Malta has reached out to the Energy Ministry for a comment.Were you impacted by the July power cuts?•