They are Maria Carmela Di Bartolo, 65 years old, and Rosa Marina Catalano, 59 years old, the two suspended doctors working at the “Addiction Service” in the “Santa Maria degli Ungheresi” Hospital in Polistenaagricultural center of the Gioia Tauro plain.
The investigating judge Francesca Mirabelli – accepting the request of the Palmi Prosecutor’s Office directed by Emanuele Crescenti, resulting from the investigations of the Guardia di Finanza of the provincial command of Reggio Calabria – underlining in her order the behavior of the two suspects, highlights their «systematic, without any valid service reason, to return to their homes for personal needs, such as going to the post office or the supermarket”.
The judge for preliminary investigations, as well as having ordered the precautionary seizure of the emoluments paid by the local health authority to Maria Carmela Di Bartolo and Rosa Marina Catalano for the hours of work declared and never carried out for approximately eight thousand euroshighlights «the poor sense of professional ethics and indifference towards the community in a delicate sector such as public health, the systematic and unscrupulousness, symptomatic of habituality, of the reported conduct, evidently an expression of widespread and deep-rooted bad customs involving precisely the managerial level staff, abstractly invested with greater responsibilities and obligations and even more abstractly understood as an ethical reference figure”.