"Very dangerous instrument." Sicily, Catania charter on payday loans blocked.

The so-called Catania Charter, i.e., Assessor’s Decree No. 74/GAB that introduced the possibility of granting the assets of Sicily’s museum deposits against payment of a fee(more on this here), has been blocked. In fact, the Culture Commission of theSicilian RegionalAssembly, the region’s parliament, approved the resolution by Movimento 5 Stelle, Pd and Cento Passi that commits the Musumeci government to withdraw Councillor Samonà’s decrees related to the so-called Charter.

The latter is in fact considered by opposition deputies “a very dangerous tool for Sicilian cultural heritage.” What’s more, in addition to the withdrawal of the decrees, the resolution aims, among other things, to commit the government “to put in place all actions within its competence for the cataloging and enhancement of cultural heritage in the regional repositories and to undertake a virtuous involvement of start-ups and youth enterprises that have qualified personnel working in the sector.” The Catania Charter, since its approval, has raised a lot of criticism: our newspaper collected several of them in an article by Silvia Mazza.

“This instrument,” declare Pentastellati deputies Valentina Zafarana, Giovanni Di Caro, Stefania Campo, Ketty Damante and Roberta Schillaci, “could create irreversible damage to our cultural heritage and therefore must be stopped. We reiterate once again: the Region cannot abdicate its institutional role of protection, conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage just to make cash, being replaced by private and other public entities. There remain unresolved inconsistencies in the Samonà decrees between loan, concession in use and concession of valorization. There also remains the problem of human resources, already numerically inadequate, which would also be overburdened by the tasks that the assessorial decrees presuppose for the superintendencies.”

“Councillor Samonà,” says Dem deputy Nello Dipasquale, “missed the opportunity to initiate a serious and constructive confrontation within the culture committee of Parliament. He preferred to impose a path that he had already started in complete solitude, instead of, with humility and responsibility, suspending or withdrawing an act that he had given birth to with the contribution of a few friends.”

“These decrees,” emphasizes Claudio Fava of the Hundred Steps, “are the result of an inadmissible misunderstanding, namely the idea that the Region’s museum deposits are just dusty warehouses. An image that must be overturned by asking the Superintendencies to give back to those goods in storage the destiny they deserve: cataloging, valorization, cultural offer.”

Photo: Paolo Orsi Regional Archaeological Museum depot in Syracuse.

"Very dangerous instrument." Sicily, Catania charter on payday loans blocked.

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