Minister Adolfo Urso has been at the former Ilva in Taranto since 6.15am
to visit the plants and talk to the workers, accompanied by the extraordinary commissioner Giancarlo Quaranta.
This is the first appointment on the agenda of the head of the Department of Business and Made in Italy in Taranto: at 8.15 he will go to the prefecture for a summit with all the representatives of the social and productive partners and local and regional institutions.
Urso then entered the factory for a visit to the facilities.
Then he will hold a press point and will then go to platform 1 of the Taranto railway station for the arrival of the Memory Train, a historic convoy made available by the FS Italiane Foundation and specially set up with a multimedia exhibition and the display of the household goods of the exiles.
Also present were the trade unions and the Fratelli d'Italia deputies Dario Iaia and Giovanni Maiorano.
Urso spent a few minutes with the workers, listening to their requests and in turn assuring the government's commitment to business continuity, before meeting the union delegates.
"There is the objective of relaunching the former Ilva plant in the coming months, in the coming years, when the site will be managed I hope it will be by an important and significant industrial player who is betting on the site and therefore on Taranto's work to relaunch and affirm it in Italy and Europe" said Urso.
"If this joint work is done - he added - I am convinced that we will win this challenge and if we win the challenge of Taranto, which was the emblem of the industrial and environmental decadence of the country, it means that we will succeed in Italy".
"For this reason - he said, addressing workers and union representatives - it is not just your challenge, it is not just your job that is up for grabs, it is Italian jobs that are up for grabs".
"We must work together to reverse the trend to relaunch and secure the most important steel site in Italy which can once again become, in the environmentalization phase, the most environmental and most sustainable steel site in Europe" added Urso speaking to the workers.
"I ask you - he added - full and maximum collaboration and I will give you the full and maximum collaboration of the government and all the institutions. We must demonstrate that this is the site of the city, that this is the steel site of our nation. We want to relaunch it and then assign it to those who really demonstrate, and we will check that this is the case, step by step, because the government is there today and will also be there in the coming months and years".
Addressing workers and unions, the minister urged: "Help us achieve this objective on behalf of Italian workers because we are convinced that the challenge each of us has is in the work that each of us carries out and we want to give back to the workers, to all the workers , in whatever environment they operate, the pride of being Italian workers. And I believe that together - he concluded - we will be able to restore in Taranto the pride of being workers of the Acciaierie d'Italia steelworks site".
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