Genoa evacuees demand rehousing

(ANSA) - Genoa, September 4 - The government said it would help after a group of evacuees from the August 14 Genoa bridge collapse demanded rehousing and respect after they were admitted to a Genoa council meeting on the disaster on Tuesday.
    They urged local and national officials to provide guarantees on their future.
    The protestors passed out leaflets titled 'The Morandi Bridge People' saying "50 years of service, two weeks of suffering".
    They chanted "respect, respect" at the meeting.
    They were said to be about 50 in all.
    They told Liguria Governor and extraordinary commissioner for the disaster Giovanni Toti: "We come before the businesses, we come before the transport system, we're first, we want homes!".
    The collapse killed 43 people and caused the evacuation of many flats below the bridge.
    The evacuees are right, Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio said later Tuesday.
    "They're perfectly right, you can't leave people at the whim of Autostrade hand-outs", he said.
    Di Maio said an urgent government decree was being readied to address the rehousing of the Genoa evacuees.
    "It's a question of weeks but perhaps also a few days and then we'll put out this decree," he said.
    Toti criticised Di Maio for "sounding off", saying the evacuees were "all getting public accommodation".
    "And in record time," the governor said.
    "While you were sounding off to the press, the mayor and I were with the evacuees, to clear up doubts and understandable concerns", Toti said.
    "Fewer polemics and more concrete action is needed to help Genoa," he said.
    "We await the laws that will allow us to open and accelerate building sites, compensate citizens and businesses, and rebuild the bridge," Toti said. The government will provide aid to families and firms hit by the collapse, Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said on Tuesday.
    He promised that all evacuees would be resettled "within three months".
    Toninelli said authorities would provide support for mortgages for families and tax breaks to businesses.
    "The government will put into the field forms of aid in the order of the mortgage payments that many families are forced to pay on property they can no longer live in," he said.
    "It will also help firms, in the area of the collapse, to resume productive cycles, envisaging forms of fiscal easements or incentives for temporary delocalisation".
    Toninelli also said "from now on all concessionaries will be forced to reinvest".
    Motorway concessionary Autostrade per l'Italia will not rebuild the bridge, Toninelli said.
    He said the government was "compact" on this point.
    "The reconstruction will be entrusted to a public subject, but it will be concessionary company ASPI that will pay the costs," he said.
    A demolition project for Genoa's collapsed Morandi Bridge will be presented by Autostrade per l'Italia "within five days," Liguria Governor and emergency commissioner Toti said Tuesday.
    "In five days' time Autostrade will present us with the definitive plan for the demolition of the Morandi Bridge," he told a council meeting.
    "The plan will be illustrated to the technical committees and first and foremost to the prosecutors whose decision it is to de-sequester the area and get to the truth on the causes of the tragedy," he said.