Govt to challenge Musumeci migrant centre closure order

(ANSA) - ROME, 26 AGO - The government said Wednesday it would challenge a controversial ordinance by Sicily Governor Nello Musumeci to close migrant centres on the island amid alleged COVID concerns.
    Centre-right Governor Musumeci has been engaging in a tug of war with Rome since the weekend.
    He has been backed by the nationalist opposition League party and criticised by centre-left parties in government.
    League leader Matteo Salvini, who as former interior minister applied a closed ports policy for NGO migrant rescue ships, said he would take legal action against the government for abetting illegal immigration and accused the interior ministry of hiding figures on migrant landings.
    The centrist Italia Viva party, part of the governing coalition, has filed a suit against Musumeci and Salvini accusing them of falsely raising alarm and abuse of office, among other things.
    Meanwhile the interior ministry came out with the latest migrant landing figures.
    It said that 17,504 landed in Italy from January 1 to August 25, triple the number that arrived in the same period last year.
    On Tuesday Musumeci said the first migrant hotspot in Sicily was being emptied.
    "This morning they started to empty the hotspot at Pozzallo," the governor said on Facebook.
    Minister for the South Giuseppe Provenzano visited Sicily later Tuesday and allayed concerns that migrants were driving up COVID fears.
    He urged Musumeci to show "institutional decorum" over the migrant-COVID issue.
    Musumeci claims the regional government has precedence over the national government in migrant policy.
    The government in Rome contends the opposite.
    Musumeci has said he is ready to take legal action to uphold Sicily's claim to competence on the issue.
    The governor issued an ordinance to clear all the island's hotspots and migrant reception centres by midnight Tuesday, but this aim was not achieved.
    On Wednesday he urged Sicilian prefects to carry out his orders.
    Several COVID cases have been reported at the hotspot on the stepping stone island of Lampedusa south of Sicily.
    The island's mayor has assured Salvini that all the COVID-positive migrants there have been isolated in suitable facilities. (ANSA).