The Rosarno Pandemic: the 7th Report on the living and working conditions of migrant labourers

Rome, 11 September 2020. For the seventh consecutive year, Doctors for Human Rights Italy (Medici per i Diritti Umani -Medu) operated in Calabria region, in the Gioia Tauro Piana, during the citrus harvest season (from the end of November to May 2020), providing primary health care and information on access to fundamental rights to labourers who populate the precarious settlements in the Municipalities of Rosarno, San Ferdinando, Drosi (part of the Municipality of Rizziconi) and Taurianova. In addition to medical assistance and guidance, Medu has guaranteed systematic socio-legal support. The team also carried out widespread information, prevention and active surveillance activities in response to Covid-19, as precarious settlements were not reached by any institutional initiative for the prevention and containment of the virus.

The Rosarno Pandemic report, which was  launched  in Italy on 26th July 2020, analyses two phases: the first one before the outbreak of Covid-19 (November 2019 – March 2020) and the second one following the introduction of the lockdown measures in March, highlighting the effects of the pandemic on the already critical conditions of exclusion, marginality and exploitation of labourers of the Piana, employed in the seasonal citrus harvest (in particular, oranges and clementines).

Labour exploitation and widespread illicit practices, to which lack of controls and absence of effective measures to combat illegal work must be added, have also this year prevented the labourers from accessing decent living conditions. Most of the pathologies found by Medu clinical team represent a mirror of the poor hygienic-sanitary, working and housing conditions in which the labourer population of the Gioia Tauro Piana is forced to live: social exclusion, stigmatization, housing promiscuity, lack of electricity and hygienic services, lack of drinking water and heating in unofficial settlements, inhuman working conditions, incorrect or insufficient nutrition. Furthermore, the growing precariousness caused by the Decreti Sicurezza (Security Decrees) and the effects of the pandemic have had a pejorative impact on the living and working conditions as well as on the physical and mental health of migrant workers.

Among the assisted migrants, 90% had a regular residence permit, in two-thirds of the cases as asylum seekers, holders of international protection and other types of protection while 25% were undergoing renewal or conversion of humanitarian protection. The first Decreto Sicurezza (Security Decree) abolished humanitarian protection which in the past years represented the most widespread residence permit among labourers. Consequently, very few possibilities of regularization are available for the many workers who, due to the widespread contractual irregularities suffered, do not meet the requirements for the conversion of their residence permit into one for work reasons. Furthermore, it is very likely that in a context such as the Gioia Tauro Piana the recent measure of Sanatoria (an extraordinary measure introduced by the Government to regularize undocumented migrants employed “illegally”, that is without proper work contracts) will find a very limited application.

For the umpteenth season, Medu ascertained the absence of political will and strategic planning to significantly address the very serious phenomenon of exploitation of migrants employed in agriculture in the Gioia Tauro Piana. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, a dramatic health and social event, could indeed have represented an occasion of strong discontinuity and allow to face in a new and decisive way the dramatic situation of labourers.
Medu once again calls for the adoption of immediate and long-term measures to combat the exploitation of labourers, to overcome ghettos and to promote legality.

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