Conte urges Meloni to KO gangmastering over fatal severed-arm case

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 20 - Opposition 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Giuseppe Conte on Thursday urged Premier Giorgia Meloni to act to stamp out brutal gangmastering after a 31-year-old Indian man was left to die with his arm severed by machinery placed in a strawberry picking box beside him at Latina south of Rome this week.
    The death of Satnam Singh, one of the thousands of Indian immigrants who work the fields around Latina for slave wages and in dire conditions, beset by gang masters, has caused outrage in Italy.
    Conte, a former two-time premier with contrasting administrations, said he expected "words and strong stances from Meloni".
    He wrote on X: "You lose your arm while you're working in the fields for four euros an hour. You're not immediately treated.
    They put you in a van and they dump you like rubbish outside your home. Beside you, a strawberry basket in which your severed arm is left. You bleed out and die.
    "It sounds like the story of a slave centuries ago. We can't close our eyes, we can't think about making profits while cancelling the dignity of work and the last shreds of humanity.
    "If we ignore these atrocities, we will stop defending Italy and its values.
    "We are ready to do out bit in parliament against these barbarities, which must be rooted out of the fields all over Italy".
    Gangmastering and the often violent exploitation of migrant farm labourers is a chronic problem in Italy, especially in the south.
    Latina hosts thousands of immigrant labourers, many of them Sikhs, working picking fruit and vegetables for the local 'agro-mafia'.
    Singh died in a Rome hospital Wednesday after being coptered there when he was eventually found. (ANSA).