Video

Local residents took to the streets on Monday evening (Januaary 7) in the Pianura district of Naples to protest against a rubbish crisis that earlier in the day led to scuffles with riot police. Chanting and carrying banners reading: 'The regional president's home should be the new spot for the rubbish dump' thousands of residents marched along a road leading to a landfill site that the protestors have been blocking for several days. "The liquid from the rubbish here is mixed with everything from cauliflowers to radioactive stuff," said demonstrator Paolo Tabarro. Earlier in the day riot police escorted a bulldozer to try and remove roadblocks that had been put up by the protestors to stop plans to revive a landfill in their neighbourhood. Whilst in Rome, Prime Minister Romano Prodi held emergency meetings with ministers to decide a plan of action for the area, where waste collection ground to a halt in the run-up to Christmas. Protesters are trying to halt the re-opening of the waste dump, closed in 1996. But rubbish dumps in the Naples area are full and a massive incinerator which was supposed to open at the end of 2007 is not ready. "We have a choice on how to die - we have two alternatives, cancer if they open the rubbish dump here or with the mafia taking over everything - we will die anyway - there is no choice," said protestor Teresa Esposito. "Lets hope the civil battle will lead us to a victory but not a an institutional victory rather a citizen's victory," said another demonstrator Carlo LaFranco. People in Naples have had no choice but to dump household waste on ever growing piles in the streets. Italian media reported on Monday that some 110,000 tonnes of garbage had accumulated in the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital. The trash emergency has dogged the southern region for 14 years. Italy has spent 2 billion euros and appointed six successive "trash tzars", but a combination of political incompetence, corruption and organised crime has scuppered efforts to solve the crisis.