Italy’s 1m ‘new poor’

VIRUS JOB TOLL: THOSE LAID OFF DUE TO PANDEMIC NOW NEED FOOD AID

27% of Italians may fall into poverty if they forgo three months of income – OECD.

Within 10 minutes, all the food was gone. For years, the Solidarity Patrol charity has served up free dinners twice a week for Rome’s needy. But as Italy begins to feel the effects of its most punishing economic crisis since World War II, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, the number in need has shot up.

On one recent evening, a large crowd pressed forward for the 130 bags of food handed out by volunteers, watched over by Red Cross workers. An undercurrent of desperation hung in the air and some people left disappointed, arriving too late for a bag of their own.

Among the crowd were new faces unaccustomed to asking for help. One, who gave her name as Anna, said she had travelled across town for the food. Unable to work as a cleaner during Italy’s two-month lockdown, she has skimped on meals to pay rent on her shared apartment. “I come here from time to time now when it’s hard,” she said. “I’m ashamed about it, though.”

Anna is just one among a new class of poor that has developed seemingly overnight in a country that, even before the epidemic struck in late February, was struggling with a sickly economy, more than nine percent unemployment and vast inequality.

Another one million people will now require food assistance, bringing the total number to 3.7 million Italians, the main agricultural lobby Coldiretti estimated last month, calling them Italy’s “new poor”.

The problem is global. This month, the charity, Oxfam, estimated that half a billion people around the world could be driven into poverty by the virus crisis.

Elsewhere in Europe, Spain plans to roll out a basic income to combat new poverty, while in Britain, nearly one million people – 10 times the average – applied during two weeks of April for the government’s main form of state aid. In the United States, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs.

But to many in Italy, economic hardship feels like a double punishment. More than 30 000 people have died from Covid-19 – one of the highest tolls on the planet – while Italians have displayed notable solidarity during the crisis.

La Repubblica daily has estimated that 11.5 million Italians, half the official workforce, have stopped receiving income and started applying for aid.

Last month, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast that 27% of Italians could fall into poverty were they to forgo three months of income, in a report based on 2018 data.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who has spoken of the “acute suffering” of many Italians, in March set aside €400 million (R7.9 billion) just for food stamps.

“We don’t want to leave anyone behind, left to fend for themselves,” Conte said in a televised address in March. But many have been. Among those swelling bread lines across the country are former cooks, cleaners or shop assistants who lost their jobs after a nationwide quarantine was imposed more than two months ago.

Some never had fixed employment but got by working odd jobs, or in the informal economy. Others were professionals. Declining savings rates mean the vast majority of Italians don’t have a nest egg to fall back on.

Maria Loprete, 65, worked for 30 years at Milan’s La Scala, latterly in the cloakroom, before the opera ceased activity in February. Before the pandemic struck, Loprete volunteered with a church organisation to help the homeless. “Now I’ve found myself in the same situation,” she said. “It affects your dignity as a human being.”

In Milan’s former industrial zone of Lambrate, Loprete seeks aid from a charity supermarket operated by Catholic social organisation Caritas. The charity, which operates nationwide and says requests for help are up 114%.

Also shopping at the Caritas market was Antonio DiGregorio, 64, who was laid off a year ago as a cook but managed to make ends meet transporting seniors and the disabled to appointments. “At the middle of the month there’s nothing,” said DiGregorio, who supports a nine-year-old daughter on a welfare grant.

The so-called citizen’s income was considered revolutionary when introduced more than a year ago, although it differs little from unemployment benefit schemes in many European countries. Currently about one million families qualify for the so-called citizen’s income of up to €6 000 a year, but the government is considering reforms that would expand the number of eligible people.

Before the lockdown, the Nonna Roma association helped 300 Roman families with food and other necessities. The number of requests has now swelled to nearly 4 000, its president, Alberto Campailla, said. “It’s not only those families in absolute poverty, but also people now who maybe were working under the table, who were self-employed, young professionals, and then so many migrants. All these people have no work.” – AFP

It affects your dignity as a human being