The Superintendency of Umbria is almost collapsing. But no response from MiBACT

Umbria’s Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio is practically collapsing. Raising the alarm for the past few weeks is interim superintendent Rosaria Mencarelli, who arrived in Perugia in May, according to whom the body is working under a severe staff shortage that prevents the superintendency from coping with the many requests for authorization that arrive. “I have only three technical officials,” she told Ansa in early October, “who deal with the authorizations to be issued for the recovery of the heritage injured by the earthquake. They ask me for help every day, we should have 121 people on staff, we are just 54, but the problem goes beyond the numbers, with the current activity and with the one that will await us we risk imploding, so the Umbrian superintendence dies.”

And then there is the problem of retirements, which will affect, Mencarelli points out, especially the administrative sector, given that on December 1 the last administrative staff member is scheduled to leave due to age limits. And the situation is particularly serious because, Mencarelli said, the superintendency will be forced “to block all payments and it will be impossible to govern processes, because every structure is linked to the administration.” Without administrative staff, it will be worth remembering, it is not even possible to proceed with the payment of salaries: yet, from December the Superintendency of Umbria will find itself with zero administrative staff, when the official plan provides for six. So for the other figures: there are six architects instead of the planned nine, five technical assistants instead of twenty, five surveyors instead of nine.

Mencarelli also returned to the problem this Saturday, speaking to the Corriere dell’Umbria, to which she let it be known that she had written four times to the headquarters of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism: “but I have not received any response,” said the superintendent, who then spent words of praise for the staff: “the whole staff,” she said, “shows great self-sacrifice: they try to plug the leaks, we work on Sundays, we compare and deliver reports even on holidays. Where the overburdened colleague does not arrive, he always tries to take over to give him a hand.”

Finally, there is always the long-standing problem of the 2016 post-earthquake reconstruction, which is proceeding slowly, despite the fact that the extraordinary commissioner Giovanni Legnini has accelerated the processes, due to the fact that there is not an adequate number of officials who can do the reconnaissance on the territory: for the entire Valnerina, for example, there are only two. “Frankly,” Mencarelli concludes in his interview with Corriere dell’Umbria, “this way it is not possible to continue. Someone tell me if this is the way to protect the heritage of such a rich region? So we also lose all the work done over the years. And we feel powerless.”

Image: the Arch of Augustus in Perugia, headquarters of the Superintendency of Umbria. Ph. Credit

The Superintendency of Umbria is almost collapsing. But no response from MiBACT

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