“He would have killed us, he said he was a mafia member.” It is one of the most weighty sentences contained in the complaints that contributed to bringing to light the alleged system of labor exploitation in the Sibari Plain. The operation called “Master” brought to light a story made up of foreign labourers, miserable wages, endless working days, degraded housing and, according to the reconstruction of the Catanzaro DDA, intimidation used to prevent workers from rebelling.
The investigation, which resulted in the arrest of 20 people (the investigating judge did not validate ten of them, releasing the recipients) and in the overall registration of 66 suspects, paradoxically seems to arise from a complaint presented in 2020 by two Pakistani citizens, Qadeer Husnain Afzal and Zain Subhani. The two had reported the damage to the tires of their cars, indicating some African citizens as responsible. However, the investigations by the Carabinieri would have completely overturned the initial picture. Behind that story, according to investigators, conflicts emerged related to working conditions, requests for regularization of contracts and the failure to pay several monthly salaries.
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