L’ecological operator. A professional figure better known as the street cleaner. A humble job, like many others, but today it has become the chimera to be achieved 3500 Palermo residents. Unemployed, precarious workers and even university students. People of all levels and ages chasing a dream called a permanent job.
It’s the day of the written test for the competition announced by Rap, a company that deals with waste collection in Palermo, to hire 306 ecological operators. The exams will take place between today and tomorrow at the Saracen hotel in Isola delle Femmine (PA). There will be four rounds in which the candidates will take one another to complete the written test. Fifty multiple choice questions which will concern general knowledge questions, basic notions of environmental hygiene, waste management and separate collection; basic knowledge of safety at work; rights and duties of workers; elements of the highway code.
Fixed position, a goal that will not be achieved immediately
Each exam will last fifty minutes. Just under an hour in which the working future of thousands of people will be decided. Only one in ten will succeed in obtaining the long-desired permanent position as ecological operators at Rap. A transition that however will not be immediate. Meanwhile, in the first phase, Rap will only be able to hire 106 people. The other 200 will have to wait for the ranking to progress, which can be achieved through the finding of the necessary resources by the Municipality.
Secondly, before being stabilized, the winners will receive a fixed-term contract. A will expressed by the Municipal Administration in the resolution relating to the adoption of the Rap recovery plan. As already stated by councilor Pietro Alongi, this is only a step towards stabilization, even if first it will be necessary to approve a series of preparatory documents for the relaunch of the company, such as the industrial plan and the PEF Tari, i.e. the financial economic plan necessary to determine the amount of the waste tax that the citizens of Palermo will pay.
New ecological operators at Rap, a marathon starting at the end of 2022
Whatever happens, the written test to be administered to over 3,500 candidates will be one of the last stages of a long marathon that started in December 2022, when the former sole director Girolamo Caruso announced his desire to start three insolvency proceedings. The first involved the hiring of two new technical executives at Rap. The second related to the entry of 46 new drivers. Procedure which ended some time ago and for which the winners of the tender have already been alerted.
On this front, however, a key step is expected in the City Council, in order to be able to definitively authorize the hiring, which is also necessary for the success of the second step of separate waste collection. A fact which has attracted the attention of the trade unions. Cgil, Uil and Fiadel have repeatedly asked the mayor Roberto Lagalla for a meeting on the issue, but this meeting never took place. Meanwhile, workers’ representatives are today expected to sign yet another extension of the so-called productivity projects, i.e. forms of double shifts and overtime necessary to cover company staff shortages. There is little doubt about the “yes” to the extension, even if there are increasingly more doubts among the management of the aforementioned unions.
There were over 18,000 applications
The third and final competition procedure concerns the hiring of the 306 ecological operators at Rap. The overall requests received at Rap’s offices exceeded the quota 18,000 units. An abnormal number that had to be reduced in order to proceed with the written test. So the company relied on an external commission, which made an evaluation of the qualifications, comparing them with the requirements required by the tender and establishing a minimum access score of 58. The first screening thus led to a group of 5500 unitsfrom which the 3500 winners who will access the written test. Of these, 3000 are part of the list of selected participants, while another group is placed in the reservist group. Today there will be the written test, necessary to determine the ranking of the winners, which should be drawn up by the beginning of the summer.
