On the situation of the former Ilva, a series of associations intervene and once again raise their voices on a situation that sees the city of Taranto and its inhabitants at the centre. Here’s the note.
The entire Italian people will be happy to know that Acciaierie d’Italia has accumulated debts amounting to several billion euros, in addition to those already used to keep the plant alive, paid, among other things, by all Italian taxpayers: an economic catastrophe unprecedented which will weigh, as in the recent past, on every citizen of this nation.
Yet, in perfect continuity with previous governments, the latter also moves like an elephant in a glassware factory to reassure that a rosy future is foreseen for the Taranto steelworks, with a line of buyers that cannot even be reached at the CUP of an ASL to imagine. They do not think, prime ministers and ministers, that the steelworks is right at the center of the SIN (Site of National Interest) in Taranto, the reclamation of which is entirely the responsibility of the government. No, for twelve years now the various governments that have followed one another, including the one currently in office, have produced decree laws to encourage production continuity to the detriment of the environment and human health. They are so attentive to promoting production continuity that they sell the fairy-tale vision of a “clean” steelworks as achievable, with the idea of decarbonisation (which means producing without carbon) through the use of (polluting) furnaces which do not replace blast furnaces, but to be added to these. They go even further, with deceptive propaganda: they talk about steel produced with green hydrogen, an idea that would see the light in twenty years and at a cost of twenty billion.
Of course, despite production being at an all-time low, pollution problems remain real and very serious: benzene peaks continue to set record after record. And they are negative records for human health. As well demonstrated by studies and technical-scientific reports, benzene is considered the primary cause of leukemia in children.
Despite this, the Genoese trade unionists of the triple alliance, supported by their national bureaucracies, who are also aware of how much and what damage hot production causes to the environment and human beings, urgently ask for an increase in the production of the Taranto steelworks, with the return to operation of a second blast furnace to be added to the one currently active, otherwise dark times are foreseen for the north. We must continue to get sick and die, in Taranto, to enrich the north.
They don’t seem to care that too many children in Taranto get sick, like women and men of all ages, and that sustainable secular activities, such as fishing and mussel farming, agriculture and livestock farming, are penalised, to the point of canceling them. They need steel to be worked “cold”, with no risk to the health of the workers and citizens of Genoa, where “hot” production was closed twenty years ago because it was incompatible with the health and life of human beings. For them, only deaths due to accidents at work count, not those caused by economic (or “strategic” interest, to use an adjective dear to governments in recent decades): the experts appointed by the Court of Taranto have highlighted how the emissions of largest and most polluting European steelworks, a true national shame also supported by politicians of all stripes, have been considered dangerous to human health. Yes, they call themselves trade unionists, but they are the first, together with their colleagues from Taranto, to have betrayed the first commitment of the Union: to protect the dignity of work.
The carousel, however, must continue to turn, at any cost, at any price, until it brings Taranto into the world list of “sacrifice zones”, often created by the collusion of governments and businesses, whose citizens are treated as “use and throw away” (Report of the UN Commission on Human Rights, January 2022).
Billionaire economic losses, layoffs at unprecedented levels, unemployment at more than critical percentages, illnesses and deaths in unbearable numbers, trampled dignity of work, equal dignity between citizens of the denied nation are just some of the points that make up the ex-Ilva affair the greatest scandal and greatest shame in the history of the Italian Republic.
The guilt of politicians and trade unionists will be exposed, that’s for sure. Maybe already next June 25th, the day on which the Court of Justice of the European Union will read its conclusions regarding the injunction that 10 adults and a child from Taranto have presented at the Court of Milan against Acciaierie d’Italia spa, Acciaierie d’Italia Holding spa and Ilva in association
Only ten days left. We wait.
ANTA (National Environmental Protection Association)
Taranto Parents Association
Lovely Taranto Association
Noi Association
Peacelink Association
Free and Thinking Citizens and Workers Committee
Committee for the Mar Piccolo Park
ANIEF (School Union)
LMO (Organized Metalworkers Union)
