“I promise you that starting from the day after tomorrow, when we meet in Rome, we will already try to have answers,” Piantedosi told Lampedusa Mayor Filippo Mannino after a brief visit with Valerio Valenti, head of the Interior Ministry's Department for Civil Liberties and Immigration and newly appointed commissioner delegate for the state of emergency for migrants, to the tiny Sicilian island that is bearing the brunt of the recent uptick in sea arrivals from north Africa.
“We have to give him a hand. We have to find a way, an extraordinary one of course, to give him a hand,” Piantedosi then said to Agrigento Prefect Maria Rita Cocciufa.
“We are asking (Mannino) to perform the role of reception, give or take a thousand (arrivals) since (Lampedusa) is the first gateway to Italy and to Europe,” concluded Piantedosi.
During the visit Piantedosi and Valenti met with local authorities and visited the hotspot.
Nearly 400 migrants and refugees arrived on Lampedusa on Tuesday in a total of 12 landings.
The new arrivals came after 1117 people arrived on the tiny Sicilian island in 28 landings on Monday, including a group of 47 migrants and refugees rescued by the humanitarian vessel Open Arms after their boat capsized.
The incident took to four the number of shipwrecks during the day that left in all two people dead and around 20 people missing.
As of dawn on Tuesday there were 2698 people in the hotspot against an official capacity of just under 400.
ANSA
