Lack of water at the shantytown known as "Tre titoli", which hosts several hundred migrants, is a recurring problem. It has been reported on and off since 2018.

On Thursday (August 31) a delegation of migrant workers who live in 'Tre titoli' went to the town hall of Stornarella to ask authorities to "provide water" to the camp.

The shantytown is located in the countryside between Cerignola and Stornarella, near Foggia. Hundreds of immigrants who work in the fields around Foggia live there, with the population rising to roughly 1,000 residents during the summer season. Most of them hail from Ghana.

Migrants must walk for kilometres to get water

'Tre titoli' gets water through tanker trucks that reach Cerignola twice a week, which fill up tanks for migrants. However, the area of the shantytown that is territorially part of the municipality of Stornarella allegedly doesn't get any water, activists have denounced.

"Water provision is the responsibility of municipalities that, in addition to filling up all tanks in front of abandoned farmhouses" inhabited by migrants, "are also responsible for their cleanliness and upkeep, to prevent potential bacterial infections," said activists from the local network Campagne in lotta defending farmworkers' rights, who are following the case.

"All this, however, only occurs, in part, in the portion of the territory administered by the municipality of Cerignola. Only in part because, according to the ghetto's residents, the tanks are filled up but never cleaned or changed," the activists denounced.

The problem, according to information gathered by the activists, "concerns those living in the municipality of Stornarella, where migrants are forced to get (water) from farmhouses in the area of Cerignola, after walking for several kilometres, while others have bought tanks with their own money."

The mayor of Stornarella, Massimo Colia, contacted by ANSA, said he was committed to solving the problem very quickly.