Dumped with an arm amputated in front of the house. Satnam Singh, “Navi” for his workmates, a 31-year-old agricultural worker of Indian nationality, seriously injured by a plastic wrapping roller towed by a tractor in a field in Borgo Santa Maria, died after a day and a half of agony. on the outskirts of Latina. He died from severe blood loss due to the amputation of a limb, and he died above all because his “corporal” and his employer left him on the street, in Sant’Ilario, without alerting 118. A delay in rescue was the result fatal.
The man died yesterday morning at San Camillo in Rome where he had been taken by air ambulance called by a compatriot. The two, the employer and at least one other employee, are being investigated by the Latina Prosecutor’s Office for manslaughter. A few hours after the event, after having washed the blood from the minibus used to transport ships, they went to the police, accompanied by a lawyer, to put their version of what happened in black and white. They leave the barracks with a complaint for serious injuries, failure to provide aid and violation of the laws regarding irregular employment. Now, after the man’s death, their position worsens. We are looking for a third person involved in the accident, the one driving or on board the vehicle that brought Navi home with his wife. According to what the woman, who does not speak Italian, said, her husband was dragged by the machinery which also injured his lower limbs. Immediately afterwards the “boss” loaded them onto the goods transport van. “We thought he was taking us to the hospital,” she told the police, “but instead he left us on the asphalt in front of the house.” The amputated forearm placed in a fruit crate, Singh in a pool of blood. The woman screams and despairs, asks for help but doesn’t utter a single word in Italian. A workmate rushes in and alerts 118. The medics rush to Sant’Ilario and stabilize the patient while waiting for the air ambulance. The poor man’s condition is very serious. Desperate. The Roman doctors cannot recover the limb but they do everything possible to at least keep the 31-year-old alive. «The clinical picture is worrying», they say before entering the operating room. The man survives the first night, he expects his values to return to normal, but he has lost too much blood. He hopes for a miracle, which doesn’t arrive. Satnam Singh, in Italy for 3 years with his wife, lived in a peripheral area of Cisterna, in the Pontine countryside, in Sant’Ilario and worked in a local company that grows courgettes and watermelons.
An endless slaughter, that of illegal workers, without contracts and without safety measures. The Latina city council, upon hearing of Singh’s death, unanimously asked to become a civil party in the possible trial of those responsible. «What happened in our city – says the mayor of Latina, Matilde Celentano – is a violation of fundamental human rights, human dignity and workplace safety regulations. Gangmastering is a shameful plague.”
On the same day two more deaths at work, again in
Lazio. A 58-year-old was hit by an iron beam while he was working in a company in Ceprano (Frosinone) while an 84-year-old died crushed by the tractor he was driving which overturned in the province of Latina.
