Around two hundred people took part in Gricignano d'Aversa at the picket held in front of the gates of the Frigocaserta company to ask for "truth and justice for Patrizio Spasiano", the 19-year-old worker who died following an accident in the frozen food company due to an ammonia leak.
The “Potere al Popolo” and “Comitato Giustizia per Patrizio” organized the demonstration. Spasiano was with three other colleagues when the accident occurred at work, all employees of the Cofrin company in Villaricca, and was carrying out maintenance work at Frigocaserta.
“They killed him, I want the truth, Patrizio was an intern and only earned 500 euros, and he shouldn’t have been there” shouted the young worker’s mother, Simona Esposito, present at the picket with her husband and Patrizio’s father, Armando Spasiano, and the 19-year-old’s girlfriend, Noemi.
Many of Patrizio's friends also arrived in Gricignano d'Aversa, as well as the students of the University Collectives who have been mobilizing for days for Patrizio, after whom they have symbolically named several streets in Naples, Turin and Padua; also present were the Studenti Autorganizzati Campani (Sac), the Ex Opg - Je so Pazzo, the Ecologia Politica (EcoPol) collective, the Movimento Migranti e Rifugiati Napoli (MMRN) and the USB union.
No one from Cofrin was at the picket, just as no one, among the employees and managers of Frigocaserta, left the company to show solidarity with the protesters. During the morning, flowers were laid in front of the company gates and a blackened mannequin was placed with its hands on its face, to imitate the way in which Patrizio died, left alone during the ammonia spill because his colleagues had fled for safety; the rescuers entered after several hours, finding Patrizio's body almost burned and in the pose reproduced by the mannequin.
"We are here today to ask for the truth about what happened to Patrizio Spasiano who, on an internship for 500 euros a month, found himself carrying out a task that was not his" underlined Giuliano Granato, national spokesperson for Potere al Popolo, who then asked himself a whole series of questions, to which the investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples North for manslaughter will have to give an answer.
. “Because there were no adequate safety systems to stop in time the toxic substance that killed him. Why did the labor consultant who activated the internship not verify all the conditions?
Who was supposed to provide the necessary training on safety and did not do so? Not only that, we think it is urgent to intervene on the precariousness of our system, because in the mechanism of contracts and subcontracts it is always the workers who pay, even with their lives. For this reason, it is necessary to introduce the crime of homicide at work. Demanding justice – concludes Granato – means that no one in this region is sent to die for an internship”.
Article published on 27 February 2025 - 15:04
