The living, working and sanitary conditions of the several thousand migrants who arrive at the Piana di Gioia Tauro every year to harvest citrus fruits are consistently appalling (see VIDEO, see PHOTOS). In one month, 150 agricultural workers have been assisted by the mobile clinic of MEDU. They are mainly from sub-Saharan Africa and are living in shanty towns or abandoned country cottages of the municipalities of Rosarno, San Ferdinando, Rizziconi and Taurianova. Two out of three of the migrants seen by MEDU possess a regular residence permit; most of the others have an international or humanitarian protection status. There is no vision or project arranged for migrants who will arrive in the next season. An intervention of the government and the region Calabria is necessary.
Piana di Gioia Tauro, 12th march 2014 – Yesterday a team of Medici per i Diritti Umani (MEDU) distributed sleeping bags to 120 migrants working as seasonal laborers and forced to live in dramatic housing and hygienic conditions in abandoned country houses in the area of Taurianova, Rizziconi and Rosarno. During the citrus fruits season, from November to March, every year over 2.000 agricultural workers arrive in the Piana di Gioia Tauro, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the same phenomenon occurs yearly in the municipalities of Rosarno, San Ferdinando, Rizziconi and Taurianova the working and living conditions of these migrants – on whose shoulders the agricultural yields of the Piana are literally based– continue to be disastrous and are incompatible with the principles of a country that should be respectful of fundamental human rights. Little or nothing seems to have changed in relation to the living and social conditions that were the basis of the dramatic situation in Rosarno in 2010. At the January of 2012 opening of the first camp for season workers, built in the municipality of San Lorenzo as an emergency measure, then Minister of Integration Riccardi stated that “Rosarno should not be left alone and will never be on its own”. In reality, the municipality and the territories of the Piana di Gioia Tauro seem to be more on their own than in the past. We are left with the perception of neglect and non-engagement in the face of the serious problems of this territory on behalf of the Regione Calabria and of the National Government.
In the new camp at San Ferdinando provided by the Ministry of the Interior about one year ago, the tents accommodate up to 450 persons. At present the place holds double that number of migrants, crowded together, not only in tents, but also in shacks and improvised shelters made of wood and plastic tarpaulins. Last November a young migrant who couldn’t find shelter inside the camp froze to death in a motorcar. The whole settlement lacks the most essential services. In the months between May and January there was no electricity, and afterward only the external street lights were lit. Heating of shelters and of water, as well as cooking is possible only by campfires between the shacks, a situation that also contributes to the precarious security conditions of the settlement. There is no structured plan of intervention within the settlement from a governmental authority or a managing organization, since the only funds provided for this season – 40.000€ of the Ministry of the Interior – have been used for pest control and for what electricity has been furnished.
While the conditions inside the camp are awful, the living and sanitary situation is even more dramatic for the hundreds of foreign agricultural workers, who find refuge in the numerous ghettos and abandoned country cottages scattered all over the Piana di Gioia Tauro. These dilapidated and run-down buildings, as witnessed by the MEDU staff, lack electricity (in the most fortunate cases, migrants have generators that run on gasoline) and hygienic services. Drinking water often has to be collected from places hundreds of meters away. The migrants often sleep in groups of thirty to forty people, in a cold and cramped space, badly ventilated and deprived of light, between damp walls and leaky, half-destroyed roofs. The daily routes are carried out on foot or –despite the extremely dangerous streets– by bike, because public transportation is non-existent. It is evident that under these precarious and unhealthy living conditions individual and collective health are at constant risk.
Since February, a MEDU team has been giving first aid and social and sanitary orientation to over 150 working migrants at the camp of San Fernando and various isolated settlements and cottages of the Piana di Gioia Tauro. The majority of the treated persons are young – 80% below the age of 35 – coming mostly from Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal. Furthermore in 70% of the cases, patients possessed a regular residence permit and almost half of them (45%) are holders of an international or “humanitarian” protection status. 95% of them have been in Italy for more than two years, and 68% possess sufficient or good knowledge of the Italian language. 89% do not work with a regular contract and 64% are paid on average 25€ or less for one day of work. Almost half of the migrants (46%) are not able to work for more than three days a week, for seven- eight hours daily shifts, even though one out of four workers declared to work nine or ten hours a day. One third of the migrants, who were examined by MEDU doctors consume only two meals a day, while the majority of the diagnosed illnesses, in a young and otherwise substantially healthy population, are due to the bad living and hygienic-sanitary conditions and the hard conditions of work. All the interviewed migrants possessed gloves to be used as a security measure during work whereas only 29% were equipped with adequate working shoes. In 97% of the cases the workers have to purchase their own safety equipment because it is not provided by the employers.
While on the one hand, the big camp with all its inhabitants has been basically abandoned by the regional and national institutions that built it and that were supposed to manage it, on the other hand, it is evident that a small municipality like the one of San Ferdinando is not able to provide accommodation of such dimensions.
Furthermore, several other projects, financed by ministerial funds, as for example the village of solidarity of Rosarno and the accomodation centers of Drosi and Taurianovo are suspended, in the first case on account of an “interdittiva antimafia” (restrictions due to mafia infiltration) and in the two other cases on account of technical-administrative problems.
What seems to be completely missing in the Piana di Gioia Tauro is not only an accurate planning of seasonal reception for the employed agricultural immigrants, but most of all a political will to face what is one of the most dramatic and shameful issues of immigration in Italy. This is in fact a matter which requires concrete and coherent answers on behalf of the institutions and in particular of the Government and the Region Calabria, especially in consideration of the profound social, economic and legality problems of the territory.
A response to the distressing levels of negligence towards the living and working conditions of the migrant workers does come, within its own limitations, from the civil society of the Piana, with projects and initiatives that are in fact demonstrating how it is possible to develop effective ways of reception and integration even with limited resources. In the village of Drosi next to Rizziconi a group of citizens associated with the local Caritas introduced a project in 2010, which has allowed to accommodate one hundred immigrant workers every season in vacant housing through a minimal payment.
Medici per i diritti umani demands from national, regional and local organizations a concrete effort to start making a plan from now for an adequate and acceptable reception of the seasonal workers, who are going to arrive at the Piana in the next citrus fruit harvest, that will start next October- a plan that can be achieved valuing some of the already existing practices put in place by the civil society of the territory. MEDU launches a special appeal to the new Government and the Prime Minister Renzi to summon up resources and a political will to go against the exploitation of migrants working in agriculture taking the Piana di Gioia Taura and the question of migrant reception as a starting point. A problem of civilization concerning not only concern thousands of working immigrants, but all Italian citizens.