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New clashes in Naples rubbish row ahead of crisis meeting |
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Tuesday, 08 January 2008 |
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Police in Naples clashed with protestors over a mafia-linked rubbish disposal crisis yesterday as the Italian government convened an emergency meeting to try and resolve the row.Prime Minister Romano Prodi has called an inter-ministerial meeting in Rome to brainstorn long-term measures to resolve the chronic problem in the impoverished southern city and the surrounding Campania region, home to some six million people.Residents of the Pianura suburb west of Naples have mounted a series of protests, setting up roadblocks with tree trunks, torching buses and clashing repeatedly with police, since authorities decided to reopen a landfill closed 11 years ago over public health concerns.Across the region, residents upset by growing mountains of uncollected rubbish have set dozens of fires, sending dioxin and other toxins into the air.Yesterday, police dodging stones hurled by protesters on the road leading to the dump removed their makeshift roadblock at around 8:00 am, with three demonstrators slightly injured, police said.Emergency crews later broke up a second roadblock set up by Pianura residents closer to the site as riot police repelled protestors, the ANSA news agency reported.One police officer was seen dealing baton blows to a protestor who had climbed onto a police vehicle, the news agency said.Authorities want to add tens of thousands of tonnes to the Pianura site, only a fraction of the more than 100,000 tonnes that have accumulated over the past week with existing treatment centres operating beyond capacity.Prodi was to meet yesterday and today with the environment, interior and defense ministers, among others, in search of a definitive solution to the problem.Clandestine dumping by organised crime dubbed the "ecomafia" has forced the closure of several treatment centres in the region.Criminal investigators say the Camorra mafia pay truckers to haul industrial waste from factories in northern Italy for fees that undercut those of the legal trade. They bring it to illegal dumps in the Naples region made by blasting holes in mountainsides.School authorities had considered extending the winter holiday, but most reopened yesterday."Schools in Campania reopened this morning even though we have special situations like in Pianura where the schools are open but parents aren't sending their children to school," regional education official Alberto Bottino said.Schools remained closed in Caserta, north of Naples, where army engineers began cleaning up the streets overnight Sunday, but may reopen later in the day, he said.Italy first decreed a "waste disposal state of emergency" for Campania in 1994 when the region's dumps reached capacity, and the decree has been renewed annually ever since. The EU opened an infringement case last June when it asked Rome to detail measures for protecting human health and the environment in the impoverished southern region. |
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