LECCE – The unsaid must have had an impact on both of them. She displays the Whatsapp chat where, “every day, for years” she communicates to the mayor of Lecce about interventions in the city, attaching images and the type of work carried out. She did it yesterday too and said that he will continue to do so if Salvemini were to be reconfirmed at Palazzo Carafa.
After the mayor’s high-intensity rally in Piazza Ariosto last Sunday, the president of Lupiae Servizi felt he wanted to point out various aspects of the work of the public company of which he is sole director, on a fiduciary role (in 2029 Puglia Popolare was still in the centre-left coalition) awarded to him by Salvemini and then renewed by him.
The company – 100 percent owned by the Municipality – was brought up by the mayor of Lecce during the rally due to the numerous reports on the neglect of public green areas, “in a team or family game” that would have enveloped the city, the current mayor had declared. The reference to the “family” was double: that to the local television station whose editor is Alfredo Pagliaro’s brother (and where viewers often denounce situations of city degradation) and that to the son of President Lupiae. The latter, running for his first experience in the last electoral round, gained hundreds of votes, far exceeding those his father had obtained in 2019.
“I’m only speaking now because I received a personal attack,” Pagliaro highlighted during the conference he convened this morning. What moved him, he told the press, was the bitterness over the criticism received from Salvemini, the very person who reconfirmed him as president of Lupiae, praising the work of the company and the workers on every occasion. Pagliaro took the opportunity to reel off data and debts paid, redundancies foiled and a fleet of vehicles completely renovated since he took over the helm of Lupiae. “The city and the entire vast area of competence has been divided into macro-areas: it is obvious that by taking care of the greenery in one of the areas for a few weeks, as soon as we move for maintenance of the others, the weeds of the first have already grown back”.
The president of Lupiae vigorously defended the work of his employees, who were “evidently in trouble because they were understaffed, but present in every type of maintenance. As also happened with the San Cataldo fire in 2023, or in the thousands of potholes we repair every year. The mayor should have rather worried about investing in staff and equipment”, continued Pagliaro. “I inherited a company with significant debts, so much so that at a certain point I almost doubted that they had put me there to see it fail”. And yet, according to him, Salvemini would never have failed to take credit for the results obtained by the club. However, it should be added that Salvemini took the responsibility, one step away from the bankruptcy of the company, to reach an agreement to save all the jobs.
“From my first year of settling in Lupiae, I have always presented the three-year hiring plan, which would have guaranteed me the reinstatement of the units that gradually retired. This plan for these 4 years was never taken into consideration by the administration which never responded to these needs, increasing the cost of personnel, taken from temporary agencies by over 30 percent which in recent years has been a burden for our society, until a few days before the presentation of the 2023 budget, with a letter of authority the mayor obliges me to present the three-year hiring plan and approves it immediately during the approval of the budget. Furthermore, which is unusual, he presents the company’s financial statements for the year 2023 and the three-year hiring plan for approximately 37 units, to his electoral committee, without the presence of the undersigned, the board of auditors, the auditor, as is customary and any citizen who could have attended,” concludes Pagliaro.
LeccePrima is also on Whatsapp. Follow us on our channel.
