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NIGERIA

Nigerians attack staff at Rome Covid-19 treatment centre

Three Nigerian migrants attacked staff in a military hospital in Rome after testing positive for the new coronavirus,the defence ministry said on Saturday.

Nigerians attack staff at Rome Covid-19 treatment centre
The Celio military hospital in Rome. Photo: Kaga tau/Wikimedia Commons
The incident at the Celio military hospital, now turned into a Covid-19 treatment centre, occurred when they saw a Bangladeshi migrant walking out after testing negative and then tried to flee but were stopped.
   
They are accused of violence, resistance and causing bodily harm.
   
“The attacks at the military hospital are serious and unacceptable,” Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini said.
   
The incident was seized upon by Italy's anti-immigration former interior minister Matteo Salvini who said the government was putting “Italy in danger”.
   
Migration has for years been a hot-button political issue in Italy, a main EU landing point for people crossing the Mediterranean and arriving in Sicily and sister island Lampedusa.

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ROME

Rome square filled with coffins in protest over Italy’s workplace deaths

A thousand coffins filled one of Rome's most famous squares on Tuesday as a trade union made a powerful statement on Italy's high number of deaths in accidents at work.

Rome square filled with coffins in protest over Italy's workplace deaths

“Every year, one thousand people go to work and don’t come home,” read a large sign displayed next to the 1,041 cardboard coffins set up around the obelisk in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo.

“Zero is still too far away,” read another sign in the square as curious tourists took snapshots.

Last year, 1,041 people died in workplace accidents in Italy.

“We brought these coffins here to raise awareness, to remind everyone of the need to act, to not forget those who have lost their lives,” Pierpaolo Bombardini, general secretary of the UIL union behind the protest told AFPTV.

The protest was also intended “to ask the government and politicians to do something concrete to prevent these homicides” he added.

“Because these are homicides. When safety rules are violated, they are not accidents, but homicides.”

Cardboard coffins fill Rome’s Piazza del Popolo on March 19th in a protest by the Italian Labor Union (UIL) intended to draw public attention to the number of deaths at work in Italy. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)

Fatal accidents in the workplace regularly make headlines in the Italian press, each time sparking a debate on risk prevention. Most recently a concrete structure collapsed on the construction site of a supermarket in Florence last month, killing five people working at the site.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni denounced it as “another story… of people who go out to work, who simply go out to do their job, and do not come home”.

Bombardini called for an increase in the number of inspections and inspectors.

“Companies that violate safety standards must be closed down,” he added. According to Eurostat’s most recent statistics, from 2021, on EU-wide workplace fatalities, Italy had 3.17 deaths per 100,000 workers.

That was above the European average of 2.23 per 100,000 works but behind France at 4.47 and Austria at 3.44.

The European Union’s three worst-faring countries are Lithuania, Malta and Latvia, while work-related fatalities are lowest in the Netherlands, Finland and Germany.

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