The mayor of Rome is under pressure to resign as trade unions join forces for the Italian capital’s first major general strike on Friday over the dire state of services in the city.
Virginia Raggi, a politician with the Five Star Movement (M5S), the party ruling nationally alongside the centre-left Democratic party, won mayoral elections in June 2016 on a promise to make the city “liveable again”.
But many blame her for its drastic decline, with rubbish going uncollected for days, miles of road desperately in need of repair, and an increasingly dysfunctional transport system.
Unions representing staff at 18 of the city’s civic firms have pledged to bring “Rome to a halt” because they are tired of “living in degradation with poor services and employees working in humiliating conditions”. The strike will disrupt waste collection and trains, buses and trams, as well as schools, museums and pharmacies.
Raggi urged the unions on Tuesday to cancel the strike “for the good of the city”, arguing that its citizens did not deserve the ensuing mayhem.
With opposition politicians and residents calling for her to resign, as well as criticism from members of her own party, frustration over the city’s management is mounting.
Massimo Tabacchiera, president of the Lazio unit of Confapi, the union representing small and medium industrial companies, said the strike originated from “a city that is tired and lacks perspective”. He added: “There has never been a plan for Rome and this administration continues to navigate only by undertaking small measures and neglecting every long-term infrastructure project.”
Both the Democratic party and the far-right League have launched separate petitions seeking Raggi’s resignation. The League’s leader, Matteo Salvini, said 10,000 people had signed its petition within a few days.
Rome’s residents have organised a “passive march” along the Tiber river on Saturday morning under the slogan “enough of Raggi”. The protest comes exactly a year after thousands demonstrated outside the local authority to decry the city’s scruffy condition. “Raggi’s administration has transformed the city into one to escape from instead of one that enables us to live with dignity,” the organisers wrote on a flyer advertising the protest.
Some of Raggi’s initiatives have had a positive response, including introducing an Uber bike-sharing scheme, and recycling machines at three underground stations that people can use to exchange plastic bottles for metro tickets.
Until recently, she continued to be backed by the party, but Vincenzo Spadafora, M5S’s minister of sport, admitted this week the administration of Rome had been “difficult” and that the whole party should take responsibility. Barbara Lezzi, an M5S senator, defended Raggi, arguing that she had “inherited the destruction that all other parties had committed over the course of decades”.
Neither Raggi or her spokesperson were available for comment.
