An Italian farm worker from India died after reportedly being left by the side of the road after suffering a severed arm and crushed legs.
Satnam Singh was hurt on Monday while working in a vegetable area in Lazio, close to Rome, in a heavy equipment.
According to Roman press, Mr Singh’s company, Antonello Lovato, loaded him and his partner into a vehicle and left them by the side of the road near their residence.
The broken shoulder was placed inside a fruit basket.
Mr. Singh was not able to receive health assistance until an hour and a half after. He was taken to a doctor in Rome, where he died on Wednesday.
Mr. Lovato is currently facing charges of murder and criminal negligence.
Mr Lovato’s father told Italian media:” My son had told]Mr Singh ] not to go near the machinery, but he did n’t listen”.
Italy’s Minister of Labour, Marina Calderone, said dying of Mr Singh had been an “act of barbarity”.
Mr. Singh, who was in his first 30s, allegedly had been an illegal immigrant for about two years living and working in Italy.
The Indian embassy in Italy stated that it was “deeply saddened by the terrible fate of an American nationwide” and that it was “actively liaising with regional government.”
The trade union Flai CGIL has demanded that agricultural laborers go on strike on Saturday in opposition of Mr. Singh’s passing. Maurizio Landini, the government’s secretary general, said:” We are faced with a scenario of real enslavement. Unknown worker’s death has an unparalleled level of significance.
The region in which Mr. Singh worked is characterized by big agricultural fields and a significant Sikh and Punjabi people, many of whom work as farmhands.
Undocumented labourers across Italy are often subject to a system known as “caporalato” – a gangmaster system which sees middlemen illegally hire labourers who are then forced to work for very low salaries. Even workers with regular papers are often paid well below the legal wage.
According to a study by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, nearly a third of the agricultural labor in Italy was employed by this technique in 2018. The training also has an impact on workers in the construction and service businesses.
It is well known that farmhands, both European and immigrant, are subject to abuse in Italy.
Thousands of people work in fields, vines, and greenhouses scattered throughout the nation, frequently without arrangements and in hazardous situations.
Workers frequently have to reimburse their employers for the costs of moving to and from distant fields. Some people live in small, isolated shacks or shanty towns and are usually denied access to medical care or education.
The practice of caporalato was outlawed in 2016 following the death of an Italian woman who died of a heart attack after working 12-hour shifts picking and sorting grapes, for which she was paid €27 (£23) a day.
However, the abuse of agricultural employees has proven tough to eliminate completely.
In the region of Puglia, 16 agricultural employees were killed in two distinct road accidents in 2018.
Both times, vegetables were loaded onto trucks carrying workers residence after their day of work. American migrant laborers went on strike to protest the subpar working conditions after the deaths.
And earlier this month, two people were arrested in Puglia for caporalato after they were found to have recruited, underpaid and exploited several dozen workers.