A scene from the ceremony at Palazzo Chigi in which Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte presented stay permits to four foreign citizens who were involved in a terrible episode of labour exploitation in Naples last June | Photo: FROM FACEBOOK PROFILE OF EX-CANAPIFICIO SOCIAL CENTRE CASERTA
A scene from the ceremony at Palazzo Chigi in which Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte presented stay permits to four foreign citizens who were involved in a terrible episode of labour exploitation in Naples last June | Photo: FROM FACEBOOK PROFILE OF EX-CANAPIFICIO SOCIAL CENTRE CASERTA

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte on Monday presented stay permits to four foreign citizens who were involved in an episode of worker exploitation last June. Three of the foreigners who received permits were coworkers of Thomas Daniel, a 41-year-old from Liberia who was killed along with an Italian worker in a collapse at a construction site in Naples. The fourth stay permit was issued to Daniel's widow.

Three Ghanaian men who are residents of Castel Volturno in the province of Caserta on Monday received much-coveted stay permits directly from the hands of Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte.

The men were victims of a terrible episode of worker exploitation that took place last June, when a collapse at a construction site killed a 41-year-old Liberian man named Thomas Daniel and an Italian worker.

The men were working in the black at an illegal job site in Pianura, a neighbourhood in north Naples.

An investigation found that Daniel and the other three migrants were working without contracts at the job site.

All of them had recently lost their stay permits, which were issued for humanitarian reasons, under the security decree issued by former interior minister Matteo Salvini.

They therefore continued to work in the black without any type of worker protection.

A ceremony at Palazzo Chigi

Four months after the tragedy, Daniel's three coworkers -- Isaac Kwaku, 46; Donkor Prince, 21; and Patrick Ameyaw, 27 -- together with Daniel's unemployed widow, Cinthia, received stay permits during an official ceremony at Palazzo Chigi.

"I finally feel loved," Cinthia said, nearly in tears. The tragedy in June caused such a stir that associations such as the Ex-Canapificio social centre and Caritas, through the migrant centre Fernandes, supported by Senator Sandro Ruotolo, invited Conte to Castel Volturno, a town on the Caserta coast where Daniel and his coworkers lived.

The city hosts nearly 20,000 irregular migrants, many of whom are workers who are exploited in the fields and in construction, or by Nigerian organised crime.

The Naples prosecutor's office, with prosecutor Giovanni Melillo, broke the delay by requesting that the Caserta police station issue the four stay permits, recognizing the four Ghanaians as victims of labour exploitation.

Police chief Antonio Borrelli carried out the request and issued the permits. Invitation to visit Castel Volturno Senator Sandro Ruotolo spoke directly to Conte, thanking him for his attention to the case.

"We now put faith back in your humanity, because it is time to go beyond the horizon of the Bossi-Fini law, which is the mother of all problems," Ruotolo said. Antonio Casale, who manages the Fernandes Centre, invited Conte to visit Castel Volturno in 2021, when the migrant centre there will celebrate its 25th anniversary.

"Conte said he is available; it would be important for Castel Volturno," Casale said.

 

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