Naples' Garbage Problem

Oh my!

Fires and protests greet cabinet in Naples

By Guy Dinmore in Naples

Published: May 21 2008 03:43 Last updated: May 21 2008 03:43

Barricades in the streets of Naples and the smoking remains of a torched Gypsy camp await the first official cabinet meeting on Wednesday of Italy’s new government under Silvio Berlusconi.

The billionaire prime minister promised in his April election campaign to take his ministers from Rome to this southern port city whose descent into the stinking chaos of piles of uncollected garbage became a rallying cry for his centre-right coalition.

Staying one night in the luxury Vesuvius hotel, at a reported cost of €4,200 (£3,345) for a suite with pool, it is not clear whether the 71-year-old media mogul will get a personal taste of the “creeping anarchy” described on Tuesday by the daily Mattino. With a burst of activity since the weekend, the city’s unpopular leftwing mayor Rosa Russa Iervolino got the historic centre – where the cabinet will meet – cleaned up and even had railings painted around public works.

Life is quite different in the grim suburbs where shoulder-high mounds of garbage have accumulated since the latest chapter in Naples’ long-running refuse crisis erupted in December.

The Anti-Smog Mammas Association advises parents not to send children to school in sandals for fear of rat attacks. Many are simply keeping them at home.

Over the past week or so, firemen have had to extinguish scores of protest fires set nightly by residents. Some newspapers reported that Mr Berlusconi has received intelligence reports that Mafia gangs, known in Naples as the Camorra, are setting fires in order to assert territorial dominance.

While many residents are pinning their hopes, but not much faith, in Mr Berlusconi to alleviate their plight, at least seven protest rallies are being organised, from environmentalists to labour activists and immigrants.

In the northern suburb of Chiaiano, residents are keeping vigil to stop a municipal proposal to use a vast disused quarry inside a park as a new “mega-tip”. Trees have been felled and cars overturned to block access.

According to unconfirmed reports, Chiaiano will be one of 10 new tips to be designated by the cabinet on Wednesday. People are furious. From the left and right as well as the Camorra, residents have united in protest.

“It would be like making a rubbish tip out of Hyde Park in London,” said Ludovico Maratello, spokesman for the protest committee.

Another kind of fear is gripping the city’s Roma or Gypsy community, which blames right-wing nationalists in the government, as well as the media, for whipping up a xenophobic frenzy over security and immigration during the elections. This manifested itself in mob attacks last week after a Gypsy teenager was said to have been arrested for allegedly trying to steal a baby.

An illegal Gypsy camp in the largely Camorra-controlled suburb of Ponticelli was still smouldering on Tuesday. One man explained that they had torched the shacks after making sure all the residents were safely driven away.

Anti-immigration measures, as well as tax cuts for property owners, are on the cabinet agenda on Wednesday. Gypsies, many of them born in Italy but denied citizenship, fear they will be targeted. “This government is full of fascists,” commented one Gypsy who asked not to have his name published.