Authorities in Italy launched a big operation to break up a criminal organization that exploited hundreds of migrant workers and treated them like slaves near the Italian city of Latina.
Police in the city of Latina, south of Rome, staged a big operation on Thursday last week to break up a gang-master ring that exploited migrant workers, sources said.
Hundreds of workers working on farms were living in "inhuman conditions," the sources said. They were allegedly forced to work 12 hours a day and sign up to a trade union for pay that was less than half the rate of the national collective contract for agricultural workers.
Six people arrested
Six people were arrested in the operation, according to the sources. Two of them are women who allegedly recruited migrants from central Africa and Romania via a cooperative based in the town of Sezze, close to Latina.
Some of the workers were staying at reception centres and were waiting requests for international protection status to be granted. A trade unionist and a labor inspector are among the people implicated in the probe, the sources said.
Salvini, 'My compliments for the arrests'
Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the case vindicated his tough stance on immigration, which has seen NGO-run migrant-rescue ships denied access to Italian ports. "My compliments to the police for the arrests in Latina," said League leader Salvini. "I am proud of our forces of law and order. Immigration without rules leads to exploitation. I am counting on this brilliant operation being the first in a long series to smash a business that prospers thanks to illegal immigration and enriches those who exploit others".
However, former agriculture minister Maurizio Martina, who is running to be the new leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said some of the credit should go to previous center-left administrations. "I thank the forces of law and order and the magistrates who, by applying our law against the gang-master system in agriculture, have smashed this criminal network in Latina," Martina said.
The problem of exploitation in Italian agriculture was highlighted in August by the deaths of 16 migrant farm workers in two separate road accidents near Foggia.