The GSD says the Chief  Minister “pointed his finger and blamed GibElec”.

A statement from the GSD follows below:

Friday’s night power outage as people young and old prepared to settle in for the night watching  television or enjoy a meal with friends was a failure of one of our most important infrastructure  projects. Instead of reassuring the public with empathy, leadership and responsibility the Chief  Minister pointed his finger and blamed GibElec. The cause of the outage currently remains a mystery  but irrespective of the reason this matter falls squarely on the shoulders of the Chief Minister. 

The power station is a highly complex operation and everyone will understand that issues will arise  from time to time, but for any leader of a community less still the Chief Minister to point the finger  at any organisation for which he is ultimately responsible for is offensive and demonstrates a clear  lack of leadership and understanding of his role. As any leader of any business or organisation  

knows you lead from the front always and if mistakes are made by your people you and you alone  take the fall. Pointing the finger at GibElec over a project that the Government spent many millions  of tax-payers money on is a shameful dereliction of his role as Chief Minister. The question should  be what back-ups and contingencies are in place to avoid country wide disruption to this level and  why are they not in place? 

Shadow Minister for the Environment Elliott Phillips MP said: 

“Friday nights outage is not GibElecs failing, it is Fabian Picardo’s failing, his failing to plan, failing to  train and invest in Human Resources , failing to provide for back up and contingencies and  

ultimately a failure to take a cold hard look at himself when reacting in an intemperate and school  bully way. Team Gibraltar deserves better than this and the Chief Minister’s reaction shows more  about his deep disconnect with our people.”