Rome is not just degradation,
Virginia Raggi told the foreign press corps in her first press
conference as mayoral candidate for the anti-establishment
Five-Star Movement (M5S) in the capital.
The decision to hold the briefing at the Foreign Press
Association could be seen as an attempt "to relaunch the image
of the city across the globe after it has been sullied by so
many ugly events", Raggi explained.
"Rome is not just degradation," insisted the 37-year-old
lawyer and former city councillor who was chosen as mayoral
candidate in an on-line poll Tuesday.
"We want to completely change the public transport system,
which needs to be relaunched and not 'rationalised'," Raggi said
of one of the pillars of her programme.
"More public transport is needed, particularly in outlying
areas where until now there have been cuts," she continued.
The programme also includes creating a network of
interconnecting cycle lanes, boosting car sharing facilities and
reviving the now defunct bike sharing scheme, Raggi said.
On the rubbish collection front Raggi advocated a "quality
recycling scheme" that might also create new jobs.
She also pledged to reduce financial waste in the name of
greater transparency in the city and said camps for ethnic Roma
people would be progressively phased out.
"They are a structural emergency, we spend 24 million euros
a year to maintain (Roma) in very degraded conditions, to
maintain people who are largely of working age," Raggi said.
"Many are Italian and have the same rights and
responsibilities, they must work and pay taxes. The children
must go to school rather than go begging or worse still steal,"
she continued.
Centre-right mayoral candidate and former civil protection
chief Guido Bertolaso has already put the issue of the capital's
Roma population at the centre of his election campaign.
Raggi also said introducing a basic-income benefit for Rome
residents is "our objective" but that she could not say whether
it would be possible without having first seen the city balance
sheet.
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