Organizational critical issues, staff shortages, obsolete vehicles, revocation of the first aid allowance. These are some of the issues concerning emergency services raised by the healthcare unions Nursing Up, Usb and Fsi-USAe, who met this morning in a garrison in Catanzaro in Piazza Prefecture.
Sacco, Usb: “Services are exhausted”
“The emergency services are exhausted”, says Vittorio Sacco, health contact in Calabria for the USB. “There is – he continues – a real administrative chaos on the PET (territorial emergency station) of 118. There are obsolete vehicles despite the contracts made to purchase new ones. The information we have from the stations is that these vehicles, in fact, are not there. There are old ones with hundreds of thousands of kilometers behind them which are unable to guarantee either correct, adequate intervention times, or the safety of the workers who are on these vehicles”. Another issue to be resolved, according to the USB, concerns the first aid allowance: “The health protection department of the Calabria Region has revoked – states Sacco – the first aid allowance, which they received until recently, from all the staff belonging to Seu 118. This is highly unfair. These allowances have their own rationality due to the fact that often both the emergency room workers and those of the 118 are the most exposed to aggressions, insults, from of users, are those who have much greater work-related stress because, often, they are employed in life-saving and time-dependent practices. We think that this allowance should be reintegrated”https://catanzaro.gazzettadelsud.it/articoli/cronaca/2026/08/05/catanzaro-protesta-dei-sindacati-della-sanita-servizio-118-ed-emergenze-allo-stremo-61105b18-3bd5-45e1-bd55-6785ef0c27f7/.”The passage, the merging of the Seu 118 workers into Azienda Zero – underlines Sacco – is causing a lot of discontent among the workers who, at the moment, have no guarantees about their future. Many of these workers, nurses and doctors, are refusing to go on board private ambulances”.
“There is also a possible fiscal damage”
“There is also – according to Sacco – a possible loss to the treasury. We pay twice: an ambulance that cannot leave because it is broken and the public nurse who gets on a private Pet which is paid separately and should do a completely different type of service”.
Sisinni, Nursing Up: “We asked for a technical table, but we were not listened to”
On the same line of thought Stefano Sisinni, regional secretary of Nursing Up: “Today the slogan is ‘We want respect’. Removing the first aid allowance from the workers of the 118 emergency service means having no respect for them workers”https://catanzaro.gazzettadelsud.it/articoli/cronaca/2026/08/05/catanzaro-protesta-dei-sindacati-della-sanita-servizio-118-ed-emergenze-allo-stremo-61105b18-3bd5-45e1-bd55-6785ef0c27f7/.”We also take to the streets to the inefficiencies that are perceived by the population. We have tried in every way – observes Sisinni – to point out the need to set up a technical table to address all the critical issues but we have not been listened to. urgency”https://catanzaro.gazzettadelsud.it/articoli/cronaca/2026/08/05/catanzaro-protesta-dei-sindacati-della-sanita-servizio-118-ed-emergenze-allo-stremo-61105b18-3bd5-45e1-bd55-6785ef0c27f7/.”The reform is not working. We invite – concludes Sisinni – those responsible, President Occhiuto, the general manager of the health protection department to take note of this situation, to convene a table where we can all sit and think about the serious situation that persists”. Tomorrow the trade unions are expected to convene in the Prefecture for the cooling-off procedure, after Nursing Up, Usb and Fsi-USAe proclaimed the state of agitation of the emergency room staff, including the operators of the territorial emergency-urgency service 118 and those of the obstetric-gynecological and pediatric emergency rooms.