At around 3 am on New Year's Eve, a group of people was reportedly inside one of the makeshift buildings used as a bar and meeting place at the tent city of San Ferdinando when fire broke out suddenly and immediately spread to and destroyed other nearby shacks.

The tent city was built to house migrants involved in the orange harvest in the Gioia Tauro plain in Calabria.

Firefighters from the nearest fire station arrived quickly and put out the flames, preventing further damage that could have come from nearby heaps of flammable waste and gas cylinders, which were subsequently secured. No one was injured in the accident, but a police investigation is underway to determine the cause of the fire.

Lack of housing for migrants

In a joint statement, two members of the Communist Refoundation - European Left party (PRC-SE), national secretary Maurizio Acerbo and migration manager Stefano Galieni, called the fire "shameful".

"Yet another fire in the San Ferdinando tent city, putting the lives of more than a thousand migrants at risk," they said. "Only by chance, this time there were no victims, but the flames that destroyed tents and shacks remind us that in Italy decent and safe accommodation is not guaranteed to workers who break their backs in the fields."

Acerbo and Galieni said that in the Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia regions as well as more generally in rural areas where the harvest is done by underpaid laborers working under the table, there are no plans to guarantee the right to housing for migrant farm workers.

"It is [...] unacceptable that the many ghettos existing in those areas are evacuated when the harvest seasons end. Those who carry out such hard work must be guaranteed decent housing, a decent salary and a work contract. This should be done by the regions and the national government," the statement concluded.