Paita (Iv): “Dear Meloni, against hydrogeological instability it’s time to return to safe Italy”

“It is not possible to witness once again the images we are seeing from Emilia-Romagna. The government tell us once and for all if the fight against hydrogeological instability is its priority. We are ready to collaborate, but we must hurry” . The group leader in the Senate of Italy alive, Raffaella Paita, the issue has known and handled it for some time, having experienced it firsthand. She, former councilor for transport of Liguria, she ended up on trial for the alleged missed alarms during the flood of Genoa in 2014. she. In the end, she was acquitted with full formula.

Does this story, which has involved hundreds of families forced to be evacuated from their homes, teach us once again that there is a need to launch another major infrastructure plan at a national level? “What we see from Emilia are testimonies of great pain, allow me to express my solidarity with the local administrators, with President Bonaccini, with the mayors”, Paita begins. “It clearly reminds us how fragile we are as a country and how much we need radical and systematic intervention. Given that with the effects of climate change, the situation is destined to worsen“.

The then Renzi government, in 2014, set up the famous structure of Safe Italy. “The three pillars were: considerable investments, about 35 billion in 10 years, bureaucratic simplification, because it is not possible that the superintendents end up blocking most of the works. And a centralization of competences in a single mission unit”, explains the senator. “Except that as a first act, the yellow-green government canceled it in 2018. Leaving hundreds of projects on the street for which funds had already been allocated, as in the case of Casamicciola, in Ischia, where we could have avoided what happened later”. As the former president of safe Italy, Erasmo D’Angelis, explained in an article in the Riformista, the one born under the impetus of Renzo Piano was the last real intervention with a spending schedule that had the objective of securing portions of the country.

Basically, with the grillini, the responsibilities have been re-centralised to the Ministry of the Environment. Then not much was done again. With each new flood, when the newspapers and TVs return to deal with it, everyone remembers the need to act, to do something concrete. “And yet the government must demonstrate that it knows how to go beyond slogans, because so far we have had few answers“, Paita reiterates to Foglio. In the folds of the Pnrr decree, the Third pole actually managed to get an amendment approved by the majority for the restoration of safe Italy, But, as the Renzian exponent explains again, “in a very bland form, weakened. Primarily because the responsibilities of the Civil Protection are transferred from Palazzo Chigi to the Ministry of the Sea of ​​Musumeci. And it is rather strange that a ministry without a portfolio is dealing with it, when the appointed office is Palazzo Chigi, due to the transversal nature of the ministries involved”.

Secondly, because the government has expressed its willingness to intervene in the matter, “and Minister Fitto has shown himself to be very serious from this point of view. But the mutual jealousies of the various ministries have prevented us from obtaining concrete results. The example of their incapacity is on the Pnrr: if we had a structure that monitors projects on hydrogeological instability we could decide to divert part of the European resources that we are unable to spend on plans with a more advanced state of the art. For this – concludes Paita – declarations of intent are no longer enough. I will ask Prime Minister Meloni herself to come and report to the Chamber. There is no longer a single minute to lose“.