'Fight gangmasters like Mafia' - Martina

(ANSA) - Rome, August 20 - Italy needs to fight farm gangmasters who exploit agricultural workers by using the same tough techniques deployed by the state against Cosa Nostra, Farm Minister Maurizio Martina said Thursday.
    "We need, like against organised crime, a quantum jump to break through the wall of rubber, the code of silence and the fear," Martina told la Repubblica newspaper.
    The minister made his remarks after a farm gangmaster in Puglia this week was placed under investigation on suspicion of murdering a woman labourer.
    Paola Clemente, 49, died on July 13 and was buried but prosecutors on Tuesday ordered her body to be exhumed and an autopsy to take place on August 21. The man, who drove the workers to the fields to pick grapes, was named as Ciro Grassi, from Taranto. He is suspected of murder and failure to provide assistance.
    "Fighting off-the-books work and exploitation in the fields must be a duty for everyone," Martina said, "for the institutions who must intensify controls on the ground, as we are doing already, but also for the associations and firms who must demand maximum rigour from their associates, punishing anyone breaking the rules." "And anyone who knows of unacceptable conditions must denounce them".