Italy did not receive "any emergency communication from Frontex" about the ship that sank on Sunday off the coast of Calabria, causing at least 69 deaths, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday, who considered that "these people were not in conditions to be saved".
"The situation is simple in its drama: there have been no emergency indications from Frontex. Furthermore, the route is not covered by NGOs and therefore has nothing to do with government policies," Meloni told reporters. Italian in Abu Dhabi, during an official visit to the emirate, in his first statements on the matter.
The shipwreck, which is being investigated by the Prosecutor's Office, occurred at dawn last Sunday when the barge in which some 180 migrants had set sail from Turkey, according to survivors, sank 150 meters from the coast.
So far, 69 bodies have been located, 15 of them children, mostly Afghans, Iranians, Pakistanis and Syrians, and it is feared that the final figure will exceed one hundred.
One of the aspects of the investigation focuses on the operations of the security forces in the hours before the shipwreck and after the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) notified them of the presence of the ship on Saturday night. .
The different versions of Frontex and the Italian security forces have sown doubts about whether the tragedy could have been avoided and the new leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, has called for the resignation of the Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, who is very close to the far-right. Matteo Salvini, Vice President of the Government.
"The opposition requests the resignation of a different minister every day. It is no longer news," said the far-right Meloni, highly criticized for not going to the funeral chapel for the victims in Crotone, where the only State authority present was the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, as well as the opposition leader Schlein.
In this sense, Meloni announced that he was "considering holding the next meeting of the Council of Ministers in Cutro", the town closest to the site of the shipwreck, after stating that he had not read the open letter that the mayor of Crotone, Vincenzo, had written to him. Voce, in which he assures: "The Government has been missing, you have been missing, President".
"We have waited a week, the Crotone community, struck by enormous pain, has been waiting for your message, your phone call, your wink. During this week, the inhabitants of Crotone have been saddened by the victims of a terrible tragedy", Voce writes, adding that "if you don't feel you can bring your closeness as prime minister, come to Crotone and bring her as a mother."
Meloni insisted that what happened with the shipwreck "has nothing to do with the government's measures with the NGOs," in relation to the decree approved by his government that complicates the work of humanitarian ships that help people in the Central Mediterranean.
"We work to stop illegal flows, we have continued to save all people. That is the story. I really don't think there are issues in which to exaggerate to hit the one you consider your adversary," he concluded.
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