Prisoners volunteer to clean up corruption-riddled Rome’s mess

ITALY: Gardeners who are too old to hold a rake, dustmen who call in sick, and a plague of potholes are leading officials to recruit prisoners from Rome’s jails to keep parks and streets clean.

This week 16 inmates were brought in by bus to clear weeds and rubbish from Colle Oppio park, which has stunning views of the Colosseum but is often strewn with beer bottles.

The team of prisoners in white overalls, whose number is expected to swell to 100, is the response by the capital’s mayor Virginia Raggi to years of mismanagement of public services, corruption and a questionable work ethic among city staff.

The recruitment of prisoners coincided with revelations that three-quarters of the city’s 400 gardeners never venture outdoors, preferring cosy desk jobs. About half of those refusing to push a wheelbarrow have been let off active duty on the grounds of age or a medical condition.

Out on the streets, following years of insufficient pruning, Mediterranean pines and plane trees have come crashing down this winter after a rare snowfall and heavy rains, crushing parked cars.

Villa Celimontana, whose gardens are a popular attraction, remains shut weeks after the snow melted as officials struggle to remove fallen branches.

Raggi has been criticised for doing little to halt Rome’s decline, which started long before her election in 2016.

The workforce at the gardening department, which cares for 330,000 trees, shrank from 1200 in 1998 as work was contracted out to a group later jailed for bribing officials for work.

Rubbish has piled up in the streets this winter as an average of 1200, or 15.6 per cent, of staff at the city’s refuse collection company fail to show up for work every day.

To stop dustcarts vanishing as drivers stop for long coffee breaks, the company has installed GPS trackers.

Santi Consoli, the head of Italy’s prison service, said volunteer inmates could tackle Rome’s most pressing problem: thousands of potholes that appeared as substandard asphalt crumbled in the bad weather, causing hundreds of car accidents and leaving the streets looking like a lunar landscape.

Investigators have discovered that before Raggi’s election, council staff had been taking kickbacks for contracts from local firms, which then put down thin layers of substandard asphalt. After pocketing bribes, city officials rarely contested the quality of the work.

Romans have since taken to filling potholes with hot asphalt themselves, tackling 5,000 in the past three years. Consoli said getting prisoners to fill the holes would be a win-win situation.

‘‘Allowing them to repair and maintain Rome’s roads would be a victory for everyone, starting with residents,’’ Consoli said.

– The Times