Report on the life and working conditions of agricultural workers in the Capitanata region

Foggia, (Apulia – Italy) 21rst of October 2019. Doctors for Human Rights Italy (Medici per i Diritti Umani – Medu) publishes “The bad season. Report on the Life and working conditions of agricultural workers in the capitatana region”. Every year, during the summer season around 7.000 agricultural workers are present in the Capitanata region, with the highest numbers between the months of July and September. They are permanent and seasonal workers, offering low-cost labor primarily for the collection of tomatoes, whose production in these territories represents more than a third of the total national sum.

The summer of 2019 was yet another bad season in the Capitanata region. It was certainly for the laborers, once again employed in conditions of extreme exploitation and forced to live in dangerous, isolated and unhealthy settlements. Particularly bad because, despite the new anti-caporalato law of 2016, illegal hiring continues to represent the widespread and manifest way of organizing work. Especially in the absence of sufficient controls and effective mechanisms for meeting demand and supply of the labour market. A season made even more dire by the Safety and Immigration Decree impact on the life of foreign workers, exposed not only to a growing risk of irregularity and uncertainty, but also to real xenophobic attacks.

From the month of June to September 2019, as part of the Terragiusta project the Medu mobile clinic operated in the informal settlements of the Capitanata area, in the province of Foggia. Specifically in the Gran Ghetto of Rignano Garganico, the ghetto of Borgo Mezzanone, the abandoned farmhouses in the countryside of Poggio Imperiale, Palmori and San Marco in Lamis. In the three months of intervention in Puglia, the Medu team, made up of doctors, socio-legal operators and cultural mediators, provided medical and legal assistance to 225 people, carrying out 292 medical examinations and 153 legally-oriented interviews. The activities were carried out in collaboration with the associations Idorenin and A Buon Diritto and in network with various local organizations and services.

The people assisted were mostly young men (93%), with an average age of 31, belonging to 24 different nationalities, mainly from Eastern Europe and Central and South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan and North Africa. Specifically from the African Continent the main countries of origin were: Mali, Ghana, Gambia, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. Furthermore, despite the regularity of the stay of most laborers, only 44% of employed persons declared to be in possession of an employment contract and most of them either did not receive a pay slip or were paid less than a third of the work days actually completed. Indeed, most workers were paid 30-35 euros for a working day of 8-9 hours. Notably, 61% of the people met were legally resident; in particular, 34% were in possession of a residence permit for humanitarian reasons or for special cases, 20% were asylum seekers and 5% were holders of international protection.

In regards to health, the main problems observed among the settlement population were related in almost all cases to the poor working and sanitary conditions in which the patients are forced to live in. The ones encountered were mainly osteomuscular and connective tissue diseases; diseases of the digestive system and infectious diseases. Also worth highlighting is how, among those in possession of a regular residence permit, one in two was not registered with the National Health System. Furthermore, only 20% of the people assisted had a good knowledge of the Italian language, despite four-fifths of them have been living in Italy for a period between one to ten years. Indeed this data shows, among other things, significant critical aspects of the reception and integration system of asylum seekers and refugees in our country, characterized by important deficiencies in social inclusion and access to fundamental rights.

Finally, besides analyzing the living, working, health and legal conditions of the population assisted by the mobile clinic, the aim of this report is to make concrete proposals aimed at overcoming the devastating phenomenon of ghettos and exploitation in the countryside, which marks the Capitanata region like many others territories of Southern Italy and beyond.

READ THE SUMMARY

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Medici per i diritti umani – Medu  (Doctors for Human Rights Italy)  established the Terragiusta project in 2014. Campaign against the exploitation of migrant workers in agriculture. The partners of the two-year period 2019-2020 are: Vibo Salus, Cambalache, Aprocal, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, A Buon Diritto, Idorenin.

This project was realized with the support of:Fondazione con il Sud; UNHCR; UBI Banca; Open Society Foundations; Sanità di Frontiera onlus