The Chief Minister convened an EMERGENCY meeting of the Gibraltar Cabinet at 11:30am this morning to discuss the situation which arose as a result of Unite members at AquaGib stopping production of water. The Cabinet agreed that the Government should act, in exercise of its legislative powers, to ensure that Gibraltar will not be without water production and supply of water. The Government was ready to act with an Emergency Direction under the Civil Contingencies Act to ensure the continued supply of water production.

Whilst the Government, of course, respects and defends the right to strike, it will NEVER tolerate any industrial action which threatens serious damage to human welfare through the disruption of the production and supply of water.

The Chief Minister this afternoon chaired a Civil Contingencies Committee meeting to assess the impact of today’s outage and to mitigate against any further unreasonable industrial action next week which might once again threaten production or supply of water.

The Chief Minister, the Hon Fabian Picardo KC MP, said: “Securing our water supply to our people is essential. The Government will not accept action that leaves our citizens at risk of losing access to reliable supplies of water, whatever the reasons behind that. This is a key issue and it engages the Government’s powers under the Civil Contingencies Act and we will not fail to act to protect our people in these circumstances. We defend the right to strike, to protest and to withhold labour but we will not tolerate that right being abused in a manner that deprives our people of water. Our first duty is to protect our people and we will ensure that we do so, whatever the circumstances.”