The provincial President of Action in Messina, Salvatore Grosso, raised an important issue regarding water scarcity in the Messina area, with parts of attention to the villages of Locanda and Gesso.
“Water scarcity – he said – is becoming an endemic factor due to the local impact of physical water stress, aggravated by the acceleration and growing spread of freshwater pollution and a lack of planning for infrastructure investments and recovery of waste water. The water emergency in Sicily is a well-known issue, but we believe it is necessary to highlight the lack of adequate investments to address what is today the main critical issue of our city. Despite widespread awareness, concrete actions have been insufficient. In Messina, the decline in water resources is repeated every year without an effective response from the current and previous administration. Reports from citizens, particularly from the hilly hamlets in the northern area, have not received adequate attention.
In the hamlet of Locanda, for years around fifty families have been suffering from a lack of water for weeks, despite promises to modernize the water network which have remained unimplemented. But we know the administration now specializes in this, like when the former Mayor De Luca went around the villages continuously campaigning, promising water 24 hours a day for everyone. Similar problems, continues Grosso, also affect the hamlet of Gesso, where the age of the infrastructure causes frequent interruptions to the service. Recently, Amam decided to supply water for only two hours a day, starting from 5 in the morning, with reduced pressure to avoid breakages in the network, but in doing so it does not allow citizens to adequately fill the tanks, leaving them without water for most of the day.
This situation is emblematically representative of a program of “continuous abandonment” of peripheral areas by the institutions. We remind the current administration that in a “healthy and honest” municipality there should be no second-class or second-class citizens; everyone should have the same rights. It is necessary that in the annual planning the needs of all territories and their inhabitants are carefully considered, without exclusions.
The territories of Locanda and Gesso, today, are victims of total disinterest and abandonment. We are not willing to ignore this situation any longer and urgently ask for quick solutions to address the water emergency that is affecting these hamlets and the entire surrounding area.
The spotlight is on the “Amam issue” which has afflicted the much-suffering population of Locanda for years, but the problem is not limited to the Locanda district alone. The same disservices in similar ways are recorded in the hillside villages throughout the northern area of the city of Messina, without go very far, the same village of Gesso suffers from a water shortage, but the worst never ends, just investigate a little among the population to discover that for months many people have been suffering from the same water shortage in the surrounding hill villages, today more than ever we join in the cry of suffering and pain launched by the representative of Azione Salvo Grosso, as a Committee and as representatives and spokespersons of the population we cannot remain idle and watch people experience perennial water hardship but which high temperatures obviously accentuate it. We are close to the population, now more than ever.” This is stated by the President of the Locanda Colonna Popular Committee, Valeria Morabito
