27 October 2007

The former Messina Bridge

The affairs relating to the Stretto Messina company, with all the polemics that have come out, even on this blog, deserve more explanation.
First of all it seems appropriate to start off with what we have done. With what we have already done, before all this case came about, because this demonstrates that with the amendment for the dissolution of the company, there was a wish to arrive at a result that in reality we have already achieved. Basically, there was a wish to simply “renounce on commitments”.
Last year we already decided that the Bridge is not to be constructed and the money already set aside for that is being used to start creating more urgent projects in Sicily and Calabria.
In Calabria the money set aside for the bridge is being used to make more efficient the system where the boats come alongside at Villa San Giovanni, the work on the stretch Sibari-Roseto on the Jonica (State Road number106), the planning of the stretch Cotono-Cariati of the same road and the planning of the Reggio Calabria ring road. In Sicily we are financing the metro systems of Palermo, Catania and Messina as well as the completion of the Agrigento-Caltanisetta road.
There wasn’t anything more to be decided for the non-construction of the Bridge and there still isn’t, given that everything has already been decided.
Then it will be asked why the Stretto Messina company is still existing. I have no intention to keep it in existence. It’s even true that I have proposed an amendment that would see it merge with Anas. This is an amendment that I will put forward again when the framework law goes to be examined by the Chamber of Deputies. In the Senate, this was not accepted, because they don’t want Anas to have to deal with movement in the Straits, but they want a phantom agency, the umpteenth useless entity, good for cultivating clients and for wasting resources.
In any case, it’s a good opportunity to say that I have organised an immediate total thinning out of the Stretto Messina company. The number of employees will go from 100 to no more than 5 people. The Board of Directors will be replaced by a single administrator who will get no payment.
These are the facts. As you can see, it’s not a matter of keeping an unwieldy structure, the resources available are being used efficiently, the value generated by the company over these few years is being safeguarded and there’s no need to pay hundreds of millions of Euro in penalties. We would have had to do that if we had given in to the “ideological uproar” of certain parliamentarians of the Far Left. All that has achieved the aim of not constructing the Bridge.
PS. I’m attaching the letter that I wrote to the Head of the Stretto di Messina s.p.a. company, the engineer. Pietro CIUCCI.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Competitiveness of the economic system