30 October 2007

Messina Bridge: end of story

Text:

This is a special meeting with you but not to talk about the usual Council of Ministers. I want to explain to you the issue of the Bridge over the Straits of Messina. I believe that this week there has not been anything worse than the disinformation that has been put about.
I want to talk to you with the documents in my hand.
The message that has come across is that Di Pietro wants to do the Bridge and for this reason he has risked the fall of the government. That he has taken up a position against everyone and everything and that he even wants to keep in existence a massive organisation full of waste and who knows what else. But whenever would I have done that?!
The story is told like that because they don’t want to say how things really are: some people in the extreme Left want to destroy everything while spending ten times as much to reach the result that has already been achieved.
Let’s take things in order: we have said that we are not doing the bridge over the Straits and that it is not to be done. We have said at the start of this Parliament that the money that the Centre Right had put aside for this work would be used to do other more urgent work in Sicily and in Calabria.
With the documents in my hand: there’s my signature and the signature of di Loiero. For Calabria, with the money for the bridge, we are doing two stretches of the State Road 106 called the Jonica.
With the documents in my hand: there’s the signature of the Minister of Infrastructure and of the President of the Region of Sicily, Cuffaro, the one who is always talking about the Bridge. Even he has signed up to this agreement. The funds are going to be used for the metro in Palermo, Catania and Messina. It’s already been decided.
This amendment presented to eliminate the Stretto di Messina company is useless, because the money has already been channeled into more urgent things: the metro in Sicily and the Jonica State road in Calabria.
Furthermore, they have said that it’s necessary to eliminate the unwieldy organisation of the Stretto di Messina company because it wastes money. That’s already been done! I’ve already made arrangements for the Stretto di Messina company: an arrangement that eliminates every outlying office and the transfer of the head office to the premises of the office of public works, to my Ministry or the premises of ANAS, at a cost of zero Euro. Apart from a maximum of 5 essential people, all the personnel will go. The Board of Directors will be reduced to zero, and it will be substituted with a single administrator who is the president of ANAS who will not be paid.
The elimination of all the consultants has also been arranged. This company will no longer be spending anything.
So explain to me the show seen in the Senate the other evening, to make the Italians believe that the company has to be wound up and the law to construct the bridge has to be eliminated? We’ve done it already.
Looking at the documentation, what did the amendment say? That even the law dated 1971 needs overturning. The one that set out the construction of the bridge. If this law is revoked, automatically it’d be necessary to give the company that won the contract 271 million euro and the Stretto di Messina company, that today is worth 150 million euro, would be wiped out. If this law is overturned, as set out in the amendment, it would be necessary to make a penalty payment to all the companies involved. That is 280-300 million in damages. This little joke would have cost about 500 million euro, to get the result that I have already achieved.
I do not want to do the bridge over the Straits, but as a person who can do accounts, I don’t want to spend any more money. These people would have had us spend a further 400-500 million euro. What’s more, their amendment says: “Set up an agency for the development of logistics in the area of the Straits of Messina”.
I don’t understand: another unwieldy organisation? What is the agency for the development of the area of the Straits of Messina? There are already offices for development: there’s the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Region of Calabria and its transport unit… but is it possible that every time we have to have a company to employ another hundred employees like the Stretto di Messina company?
What’s the point? To eliminate an unwieldy organisation of the Centre right to set up one for the Centre Left.
Dear gentlemen of the press, explain things as they are. Dear gentlemen of politics, don’t take advantage of the good faith of the citizens by making them believe that I want to waste money when it yourselves that want to do that.
Having explained all this in detail, I am closing this matter as I am now convinced that I have explained it carefully to the citizens. To the others, the ones who are deaf, my words do not matter.
I’m attaching the text of the amendment that Italia dei Valori has presented. Read the text.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information