Sdg - Il forum

Hidalgo Velázquez

Caserta, 20 March (AKI) - One of the top officials in charge of the southern Campania region's ongoing refuse crisis has urged locals to keep their rubbish at home until after Easter.

" I ask you to try and keep your refuse at home during the festivities and not put it out for collection until at least next Wednesday, especially paper and packing materials," said the deputy commissioner for Campania's refuse crisis, Franco Giannini.

He was launching a new plan for separated waste collection in five centres in Campania that was due to begin on Thursday. Easter is on Sunday.

The government is now over half way through a four-month deadline to resolve the latest crisis which began in late December when the landfill sites were saturated.

Reports said that some 350,000 tonnes of stinking, uncollected rubbish had accumulated in the Naples area by the end of January. Naples' city centre has been largely cleared, but several thousand tonnes of garbage had yet to be collected, reports said earlier this month.

The refuse problem has been aggravated by the local Mafia known as the Camorra, who pay truckers to haul industrial waste from factories in northern Italy for fees that undercut those of the legal trade.

Then they bring the waste to illegal dumps in the region of Campania, outside Naples. There are fears that toxic waste buried illegally in the region could have contaminated ground soil and locally produced foodstuffs, such as fruit and mozzarella cheese.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Carabinieri paramilitary police raided 60 buffalo farms and 25 dairy factories in the Caserta area of Campania, seizing milk and animal feed.

Tests will be carried out to check if the buffalo milk - from which top grade mozzarella is made - has been contaminated by the carcinogenic toxin, dioxin, the Naples anti-mafia prosecutor's office said.

Over 100 people, including farmers and producers are being investigated and in recent weeks, large quantities of buffalo milk have been seized from around 80 animal breeding centres.

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