At the National Council of the UGL in Rome, various representatives of the government were present, the provincial secretary Andrea Alario spoke of the Sicilian province of Caltanissetta which suffers decades of isolation and crime. The signs of a relaunch between quality agriculture, Gela and infrastructures, are still the dream never realized.
This is the integral intervention:
“A blocked province is the sad keyword of Caltanissetta, a triune province in the heart of a Sicily that would like to leave again, but cannot or does not want to. There is Gela, there is Caltanissetta and the so-called Vallone area: each of these areas has its own peculiarity. In all three cases it seems to be in the midst of a tragic farce that can be told with a few simple numbers: between 2015 and 2022, according to Istat, the 23 municipalities of the province lost a total of more than 11 thousand inhabitants.
Gela, for example, should have been the flagship of the Nissen province and instead today it can be considered as an entire town that has disappeared from circulation in a province that is at the bottom of all the available rankings. Here is what remains of a city like Gela that Leonardo Sciascia called Little Athens and of a province marked forever by the mafia that is made up of politics and violent organized crime like Stidda.
In the void left by those who started and in the void of the initiatives of rebirth, the signs of hope come from quality agriculture and, useless to hide it, from the industrial center of Gela which aims to restart with the inauguration of Eni’s green refinery and with everything that revolves around energy: the green light for investments of 800 million for the exploitation of the Argo and Cassiopea gas fields by the energy company have been positively welcomed by the territory.
Precisely in the context of what has been defined as the “Gela dispute” but which concerns the entire province, we take into account the blocked funds, a string of figures that will make any public administrator blush: there are 34 million of the Pact for the South, 150 for the port of Gela which remains silted up, 5 for the Museum of the sea in Gela, 183 for the Syracuse-Ragusa-Gela railway network, 25 for the abandoned industrial areas, 48 for the Syracuse-Gela motorway, one million for the archaeological areas and 3 for the archaeological museum. In total almost 450 million.
It is useful to pay attention to the fact that today the 48 million foreseen for the realization of the project attributable to the Syracuse-Gela motorway, is to be considered by now obsolete, since it would not positively affect an idea of a road outlet such as to be able to make the connection profitable. of the industrial basin of Gela with the rest of the world, while if the sums already foreseen in the obsolete project on a new modern and alternative plan were reversed and, where possible, increased, for example by converting the current dilapidated road network that today Gela with Catania in a real motorway network, the desired connection with the rest of the world, while if the sums already foreseen in the obsolete project on a new modern and alternative plan were increased and, where possible, current dilapidated road network that today connects Gela with Catania in a real motorway network, the desired link with the rest of the world it would be more certain, concrete and future-proof.
We cannot give up the construction of the port in Gela and an active railway station, the consolidation of an industry (Eni) owned by that State that has been distracted for too long, condemning the South to abandonment. We cannot continue to witness the falling bridges, the roads of the villages of the Vallone (with Mussomeli in mind) which are only mud beds. And then landslides. And again the relaunch of our industrial areas, in the capital and in the province. What is the state, in all its articulations, doing for the new generations?
A particular situation is that of connections with the rest of Sicily: a province that is central to words, but is in fact isolated. The capital in particular is so.
After the epic of sulfur there have been no major initiatives except sporadic things: the bitter Averna, to say, whose basic infusion is still made here. But there was no real economic development plan. The industrial area, which covers about 100 hectares, was built in the worst part of the area.
There is an overall vision, in this case, which also concerns services: With regard to health, it is necessary to ask ourselves why the primaries from Caltanissetta and Gela run away.
One prospect, for Caltanissetta and the province, can be represented by tourism: in Mussomeli, to say, there was an explosion of houses for one euro, bought by foreigners who have chosen the heart of Sicily. But all of this has to deal with infrastructure. The RFI has assured that they will renovate the Xirbi station, a fundamental hub of the Palermo-Catania, which will be connected in 40 minutes with the Catania airport. Nice, but this can be seen in concrete form in 2025.