Budget to be okayed, sponging over-Raggi (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, November 23 - Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi pledged Thursday that her executive will have its city budget successfully approved soon and said a scandal over council flats being occupied by people who do not need them is coming to an end. "We will approve the budget in time to enable the central and periphery structure to work properly," Raggi said as she presented the executive's 2018-2020 budget forecast.
    "It is the end of the sponging scandal, of what we have seen with the council houses.
    "We won't increases the levies and there will be investments, above all for those who are most in need - 36 million (euros) more for the boroughs to invest in the social sector and 30 million more for the maintenance of roads and schools". Raggi said Wednesday that 2,000 council houses in the capital are being illegally occupied. "Council houses should go to citizens who have a real right and need (for them)," Raggi, a member of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), said on her Facebook page. "Two thousand cases of illegal occupation were revealed by a census of Rome Capital apartments that we have just finished.
    "That means cases of people with high incomes, or who already have properties or are resident elsewhere. "One person turned out to be the owner of 18 properties.
    "Others have incomes of 70,000, 80,000 and up to 90,000 euros a year".