Dear President Occhiuto,
many times we have heard the beauties of our regional territory exalted, where you can ski while looking at the sea, many times we have received recognition on the beauties of our villages, our coasts and many other peculiar characteristics of our Region. Many times we have had the feeling of wanting to pass off these beauties as if they were our merit, while we are only lucky users of them, in many cases completely undeservedly. Our Region has three National Parks, with many areas declared a UNESCO heritage site, recognitions of which we should not only be proud but above all jealous and responsible guardians in maintaining them and passing them on to future generations. All this through care of the territory, embracing the need to act on prevention aimed at stemming the increasingly frequent natural excesses due to climate change and, even more serious phenomena, as well as hateful and inconceivable, fires.
Protecting the beauty and the more unique than rare peculiarity of our territory, therefore, is a moral as well as a material duty.
This desired necessary awareness, among other things, would bring economic, employment, tourism and environmental benefits and, a very important and equally sad theme, would curb the incessant depopulation of our villages, especially those located in the internal areas of our territory, through structural and no longer a one-off.
The key to all this comes, in our opinion, from unblocking the turnover in the Ente Calabria Verde, perhaps the only “industry” that we possess and which, after the necessary reforms and the necessary adjustments to the general system – in truth already in implemented through the elimination of reclamation consortia and the more equitable redistribution of the remaining workers across the territory – would produce all the benefits illustrated above.
There is a fact that should make us reflect, and it is the average age of the remaining workers which will not allow, in no more than two years, to still have human resources to commit to the fire service, since the blocked turnover only creates movements outgoing, with around 350/400 workers retiring every year and the physiological increase in age among those, increasingly fewer, remaining. We would therefore need a true act of love towards our land, concretely manifested in the courage to intervene to unblock the turnover in this sector, which is strategic as well as vital for our entire regional territory. Given the above, we therefore turn to you, President Occhiuto, certain of meeting your sensitivity on the issue and your love for our Region and its infinite, yet fragile, beauties. We must be worthy and jealous guardians of it through renewed sensitivity and more courageous political will, made up of concrete acts and not just good intentions.
The Calabria Regional Directorate of Southern Italy
