“An electoral catwalk, without any response, which shows full contempt for the populations of the Strait”. It is the comment of the mayor of Reggio Calabria Giuseppe Falcomatà on the sidelines of the visit of the Minister of Transport Matteo Salvini to Reggio Calabria. “On 29 May, in the Prefecture, I personally delivered a detailed dossier to the Minister with a series of points that summarized the requests and doubts of our territory – says Falcomatà – more than two months later no answer, a clear and evident sign that Salvini has no desire to involve the territory, the municipalities and populations that will suffer the effects of a work that everyone has simply a fetish electoral”.
“Today I did not participate in the Santa Trada event: an event of clear political propaganda, between few acolytes and Northern League fans, a bad MassinScena, disguised institutional visit by the truth – adds the mayor of Reggio Calabria – is that Salvini continues to escape comparison, demonstrating contempt for the institutions and the exclusive desire to use the bridge as an electoral flag. It would collapse “.
The mayor therefore lists the multiple issues that remained without reply: «No response on the definition of high speed, for which there are still 17 billion euros missing: more than estimated for the bridge itself. No response on the topic of expropriations and on the impact that the construction sites will have on local communities. No clarification on the numerous environmental and landscape prescriptions still inevitable. No guarantee regarding the risk of mafia infiltrations in the works. Total lack of transparency on the hijacking of the resources of cohesion, funds that were to be intended for schools, kindergartens and infrastructures for the South, now absorbed by the bridge project. Absolute opacity on the violation of European regulations and procedural irregularities. No update on strategic works for mobility in the South such as the SS 106, the doubling of the Ionian railway line or the recovery of funds for the maintenance of the provincial roads “
“From Reggio Calabria has never arrived an ideological ‘no’ to the bridge. But a legitimate request for the involvement of the populations of the Strait, not with the slogans but on the themes, with concrete observations and with the cards in hand, to encourage a real propensity to listen and the resolution of objective and evident problems that we have subjected. Today instead – he concludes – yet another electoral catwalk, this time even more brazen, which offends the institutions. And the entire community of the Strait area, which overall exceeds million people.