The challenges that entrepreneurs in the Sicilian hinterland are facing in recent months, if not years, are multiple: not only the drought of this period but also an increasingly important lack of infrastructure, of efficient connections with the rest of the island, of policies that can stop the serious hemorrhage that the area is experiencing with many young people who study and work elsewhere and never return.
«As Confcommercio Caltanissetta Enna we want to be clear right away – comments the director Gianluca Speranza – theThe drought problem will not be solved with rainwhich we hope will arrive, but only when we realize the very serious situation of the infrastructures.
There are municipalities where up to 90% of water is lost and this is unacceptable. Our members bend over backwards to carry out their activities in a dignified way and these efforts need a rapid response from politicians.”
Confcommercio Caltanissetta Enna launches a proposal to the institutions: «we ask – continues Speranza – a permanent control room made up of the regional honorable members of Enna and Caltanissetta, the mayors of all the municipalities of the two provinces, the trade associations. This area is at risk: we know the history of the two junctions well by now, first Caltanissetta and Enna are now suffering from the slowness of Anas. A hard blow for those who have commercial businesses. But not only: both provinces suffer from real depopulation due to the lack of work and prospects. If we don’t want the average age of the inland municipalities to reach alarming figures, if we don’t want to see only historic centers with closed shops and lights off, we have a moral duty to team up and we must do it immediately.”
According to the latest ISTAT data, Caltanissetta is the province that lost the most residents in 2023 while Enna lost more than 23,000 residents from 2001 to 2023.
«We applaud the efforts of the mayors of both provinces for the drought emergency. But today we need concrete answers, ahelp to entrepreneurs who have had to face expenses to keep their businesses open but above all a political effort that goes beyond stopgap solutions – concludes Speranza – this control room should be established to be able to discuss short, medium and long-term solutions.»
