Strange country Italy. It has the most competitive merchant, commercial and passenger fleet in the world, but it often and willingly ignores its seafarers (and sometimes hinders them) and does not defend its Nautical Institutes.
It happened in the past, when a legislation was promulgated that canceled the cadet officers, the first step of the career: the result was that we then had to go to look for officers abroad, while the remaining Italian ones were coveted all over the world. When Italy remembers its seafarers, it also often does damage. The change of denomination reserved to the Captains (once it was once said long-term aspiring Captains for those who graduated from the Nautical sector), transformed by law into “drivers”, has also gone down in history. And then, there are the Nautical Institutes, the most forced into administrative mergers between different realities in order to survive (in Liguria, for example, it happened between the historic Institutes of Genoa and Camogli), and sometimes stalled. Like the Nautical Institute of Torre del Greco, a land that could be said to have a controlled designation of origin in terms of seafarers of all grades and capable commanders.
It happens that the school is owned by the ASL and has been used for another purpose. According to various media reports, the ASL Napoli 3, in the light of a ruling by the court of Torre Annunziata, would have written through its legal office to the principal Lucia Cimmino, requesting the return of the municipal villa, where it would like to obtain a “house of community”. In practice, at the end of the school year the “eviction” could take place. There have been protests, petitions (one in progress on change.org), positions taken. The Municipality, but it is a thing of the Metropolitan City, puts forward alternative hypotheses, but not from immediate times. And in the meantime? Didactic continuity is at risk.
Among the voices that have been raised in defense of the Institute there is also that of Confitarma, which is well aware of the importance of the “Nautical” in the formation and dissemination of maritime culture in Italy. And which logically proposes to keep the 500 students and teachers in the current location until there is another one. “At a time when the alarm is growing for the now structural shortage of Italian officers with respect to the demand for these professional figures by the shipping companies – says Salvatore d’Amico, president of the Technical Education and Human Capital Group of Confitarma – , it is essential to ensure didactic continuity and to preserve the education of future professionals of the sea in the territory of Torre del Greco, which has always represented the basin from which many seafarers come “.
And yes, because in the meantime, the demand for personnel, the possibilities of recruiting have grown. Companies are looking for men and women, but there aren’t any.