Italy’s top story on Tuesday: 

Five maintenance workers died on the island of Sicily on Monday after reportedly breathing in poisonous gas in a sewage treatment plant, in the latest of a long series of deadly workplace accidents reported in Italy’s media.

The victims had been carrying out maintenance work at the plant when some of them started to feel ill, according to local media reports.

“Five workers have died and a sixth was intubated and taken to hospital,” Giovanni di Giacinto, mayor of Casteldaccia, near Palermo, told AFP.

Di Giacinto said the workers were believed to have breathed in hydrogen sulphide, a naturally occurring gas often associated with waste works, which is toxic at high concentrations.

Almost 100 charged in Covid health pass fraud

98 Italians have been indicted for procuring bogus Covid-19 health passes from a local doctor at the height of the pandemic, national news outlets reported on Friday.

67-year-old physician Mauro Passarini was accused of issuing Covid-19 vaccination certificates from his Emilia Romagna clinic to patients to whom he either administered heavily diluted doses of the vaccine or failed to vaccinate altogether.

Over a period of several months in 2022, Italy required workers in certain professions to provide proof of vaccination via the ‘super green pass’, while residents and tourists were required to show a proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test to access a range of services.

Of the 226 initially accused in the case, 24 were handed sentences of between eight and 12 months, 17 were acquitted, and others negotiated plea deals, according to Skytg24. The trial for the remaining 98 was scheduled for the end of January 2025.

Applications for Italy’s foreign workers permits vastly exceed quota

Applications for  work permits for non-EU citizens in 2024 exceeded the number of spots available by more than six to one, Italian media reported on Tuesday.

More than 700,000 requests were made for just 151,000 available slots over the three days when the government’s applications portal was open in March, according to Sky Tg24.

Italy each year releases an annual quota of work permits for foreigners, with around half allocated to seasonal work (mostly in the agricultural sector), and the remainder mainly set aside for jobs in the the heavy industry, tourism, and care professions.

A disproportionately high number – more than 30 percent – of requests this year reportedly came from the Campania region, fuelling fears that some unscrupulous employers could be planning to game the system by selling the permits on for profit.

Italy braced for more stormy weather

Italy’s civil protection department on Monday issued low-level yellow weather storm and flood warnings for parts of the Emilia Romagna, Marche, Piedmont and Lombardy regions for Tuesday as a storm front was forecast to move in.

After several days of mild and sunny weather, forecasters at weather website IlMeteo.it predicted further rain and storms from Tuesday caused by a “cyclonic vortex” moving in from the Atlantic.

The low-pressure area was set to move down from the northwestern and central-eastern Alpine regions, from Piedmont and the Aosta Valley, towards the Upper Po Valley and the Dolomites mountain range in the east.

Showers, thunderstorms, hail and strong winds were expected in the north and centre of the country towards the start of the week, moving towards the south over Thursday and Friday, though forecasters said conditions should improve by the weekend.