Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi told an
emergency council assembly meeting on the city's trash crisis on
Wednesday that the people of the capital knew that the past
administrators of the city were to blame.
"The Romans are well aware of who reduced to city to this
and they are supporting us in changing things," she said,
pointing out that the centre left has run the city for most of
the last 40 years.
"We'll end this cycle - you didn't do it for many, many
years".
The crisis over uncollected trash in many parts of the
city is the first mayor headache for Raggi, a member of the
anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) who was elected the
Italian capital's first woman mayor in June.
She stressed that the worse of the crisis was over.
"It seems to me that the city is much cleaner and the Roman
people can see it," she said.
Raggi also gave a defence of sorts of for her Environment
Executive Councillor Paola Muraro, who has come under heavy
pressure to quit over an alleged conflict of interest due to her
previous work as a consultant for the city's troubled trash
company AMA.
"You cannot say that she isn't competent," Raggi said,
arguing she had enabled AMA to save 900 million euros.
"Perhaps she has become too troublesome".
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