The Rai leaders did not know about Franco Di Mare’s illness. They said it themselves Roberto SergioCEO, e Giampaolo Rossigeneral manager.
Di Mare, a public television journalist and former director of Rai Tre, told yesterday on the “Che Tempo che fa” program that he suffers from mesothelioma: a tumor directly linked to exposure to asbestos.
‘Service status’ denied…
“As a war correspondent – said Di Mare – I breathed asbestos. I have been in the Balkans for a long time. Each explosion released infinite particles of asbestos into the air”. And it was perhaps in 1992 in Sarajevo that the journalist began to “breathe death”. In fact, the tumor has a very long incubation period, lasting several decades.
After the diagnosis, Di Mare asked Rai for “his service record”: a document useful for reconstructing his work movements to understand where the suspected exposure may have occurred. The company, according to the journalist, denied it. Di Mare called this behavior abhorrent.
And now ‘tuned’
The words of Sergio and Rossi, entrusted to the Rai press office, make it clear that the service status will now be released: “The CEO of Rai Roberto Sergio and the CEO Giampaolo Rossi only became aware yesterday evening of the dramatic story of Franco Di Mare, to whom they express all their human closeness and assure their willingness to do everything possible to allow the journalist to reconstruct what he requested”.
Di Mare’s bitter words were addressed to the Rai top management of the past: “All the management groups have disappeared – he said – not the current one, but the previous one, the one before that. I asked Rai for the status of service which is my right, the places I have been, so I could try to ask the trade associations what to do, they have all disappeared”.
The professional nature of the tumor
Elisabetta Iannellilawyer, vice-president of Aimac (Italian Association of Cancer Patients) and general secretary of Favo (Federation of voluntary associations in oncology), confirms Di Mare’s reasons: “The employer cannot hinder an employee in ascertaining the cause of the tumor that affected him”.
“Mesothelioma – continues Iannelli – is one of the few professional tumors for which the association with asbestos is scientifically proven. Inail will therefore be able to evaluate the cause of a tumor of an occupational nature”.
