NAPLES
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pledged a swift end to the Naples garbage crisis on Friday as TV pictures of piles of rubbish and angry protests put his struggling government under pressure.
At least 20 police officers were injured on Thursday and there was further violence overnight as the chronic problem of waste disposal in Italy’s third largest city flared into violence for another night.
Hundreds of tonnes of garbage lie uncollected in the streets after a dispute erupted over a new dump near the town of Terzigno, near Naples, where the existing facility is full and where residents complain about the stench and toxic waste.
“Naples is no good. We are drowning in garbage again. They have to open the new dump but they need to do it far from the houses, because rubbish spreads disease,” an 80-year old woman, who gave her name as Assunta, told Reuters.
Overnight, police confronted around 2,000 demonstrators, who threw stones, marbles and firecrackers and used tree trunks to block access to a dump near Terzigno, located in a national park at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. Headlines on Friday were dominated by the violence, which media reports compared to a “guerrilla war”.
But the clashes were only the latest episode in a crisis that has persisted for years and which in 2008 prompted the then newly elected Berlusconi to declare a national disaster. Organised crime interests have been deeply entwined with rubbish collection in Naples for many years.
But the problem has been aggravated by inefficiency, political opportunism and unscrupulous business operators. Berlusconi promised to release 14 million euros ($19.48 million) to upgrade the dump at Terzigno but he said there was no threat to public health from the site which has been at the centre of the crisis.
