SHARE
COPY LINK

EDUCATION

Italian pupils protest school Covid closure with street learning

Her school in northern Italy is closed again due to a surge in coronavirus cases, but this time, 12-year-old Anita Iacovelli refuses to stay at home.

Italian pupils protest school Covid closure with street learning
Students Anita and Lisa sit outside their closed school in Turin. Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP
She comes each day with her pink metal chair and fold-up table to sit outside the shuttered building in Turin, following her classes online on a tablet computer.
 
 
Wearing a hat, gloves and mask, and under the gaze of curious passers-by, it is not the most comfortable place to work.
 
But for Anita, it is far better than sitting at home, as she did for weeks on end during Italy's national shutdown earlier this year.
 
“When they said the schools would close, I thought I couldn't take another year of distance learning,” she told AFP.
 
“I miss everything about school — taking face-to-face classes, looking the teachers in the eyes and not through a screen, being with my classmates.”
 
Her friend Lisa and other students soon joined her protest outside the Italo Calvino school, which began when Turin and neighbouring areas were classified a high-risk coronavirus “red” zone on November 6th.
 
 
While younger children were allowed to stay in school, older pupils were forced to switch to distance learning.
 
Most shops, bars and restaurants were shut and residents' movements restricted. 
 
Italy's education minister is among those who have expressed an interest in Anita's cause, which she advertises with a hand-written poster behind her saying: “Learning at school is our right.”
 
“Minister (Lucia) Azzolina called me and congratulated me because she liked my protest and told me that she would do everything possible to open the schools as soon as possible,” the girl said.
 
Her mother, meanwhile, keeps a watchful eye.
 
“She did not really ask… she told me 'I am going in front of the school,” Christiana Perrone said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS