A huge protest event organized by NCC operators and tour bus drivers for February 17, 2022 in the main Italian cities. And a risk: that of blocking Rome, but also Milan, Turin, Naples, Palermo.
A phenomenon already seen in Canada where truckers opposed to the vaccine obligation imposed by the government for those who work crossing the border with the United States, have blocked the capital Ottawa. For private drivers, the problem is not the mandatory vaccine, but the lack of government aid at a time when the sector is on its knees due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To announce the mobilization in a joint note Francesco Artusa (President of the Transport System), Gennaro Lametta (National Vice President of Federnoleggio / Confesercenti) and Luca Notarbartolo (President of the NCC Italy Association). “We need to bring work back to the top of the government’s agenda,” they say. Cities are ghostly, between deserted or already closed activities and mobility is at a minimum. «We must follow the path of other countries or it will be the end for our sector. The leasing and financing installments have spread again, expenses and taxes have never stopped and to this is added the expensive fuel – reads the note -. All of this simply makes it unsustainable to keep businesses open. The only thing that hasn’t restarted is the work ». «It is time to reactivate all our markets if we do not want to destroy various sectors for the benefit of international competitors. Exhibition, congress, tourism, school trips – write the three -. The virus exists all over the world and yet heavy restrictions persist only here despite the very high percentage of vaccinated and cured (about 90%) and the hospital situation under control ».
If in August, to visit the beautiful country, tourists have to show the Green Pass to have a coffee or buy a souvenir, it is clear that they will go to Spain or elsewhere. «The government passes from the rhetoric of the restart to concrete facts – they say -, allowing us to work and compete as we have always done. If, on the other hand, we want to wait for the heat to return, concrete economic aid will be indispensable to make the waiting for a long-awaited restart sustainable. In this case it would be urgent to provide for a budget deviation. It is a surreal moment. There is a country that is imagining, thanks to PNRR funds, futuristic cities on the verge of demagogy and then there is a real one that cannot survive, caught between the anvil of politics that prevents its recovery and the hammer. of increasingly burdensome costs “. To be heard in the buildings of the institutions, the operators of the sector have decided to go to the Ministry of Labor, and no longer to the Ministry of Transport. “We are tired of being ignored by Mims. Since the inauguration of the Draghi government, we have never met neither the minister nor his deputies unlike his predecessors and various documents and proposals have remained dead letters. Italian mobility, which is something much more concrete and excellent in Italy than that for now in the projects of the NRP, deserves the respect that is granted to freight transport or local public transport “. For this reason, various associations, including Sistema Trasporti and Anitrav, have sent a letter to Minister Andrea Orlando.