Two men have been arrested in connection with the deaths of four migrant farm workers who perished in a minivan fire in southern Italy early this morning. The victims, described as labourers from sub-Saharan Africa, were trapped inside the vehicle near the town of Foggia, in the heart of Italy's agricultural belt. Police say the suspects are accused of manslaughter and arson, but this tragedy has already ignited fury over the brutal conditions endured by the invisible workforce that picks the nation's fruit and vegetables.
The minivan, an old Fiat model, had been converted to carry up to 20 people. It caught fire at dawn on a country road. Rescuers found the charred bodies of four men. Three others escaped with severe burns. They are being treated in hospital. The driver, one of the two arrested, is believed to have abandoned the vehicle. The other suspect is a local farm owner.
This is not an isolated incident. For years, migrant workers in Italy's agricultural sector have been exploited by a system known as 'caporalato' an illegal gang-master system that controls hiring, wages and transport. Workers are often collected at dawn from ghettos on the outskirts of towns, crammed into minibuses or vans, and driven to fields where they toil for as little as 20 euros for a nine-hour shift. There is no official contract, no insurance, no protection. They sleep in abandoned farm buildings or shacks without running water or electricity.
Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi called it a 'horrific event'. But union leaders and migrant rights groups say words are not enough. The CGIL union has called a strike for tomorrow in Foggia. They want the government to finally enforce the law against caporalato, which parliament banned over a decade ago. Yet prosecutions remain rare. The system persists because it suits the powerful agricultural lobby and the big supermarket chains that demand cheap produce.
This tragedy comes as Italy grapples with a broader labour shortage. Farmers claim they cannot find willing workers. Yet thousands of migrants live in squalor, desperate for any job. The disconnect is stark. The real story is not the fire. The fire is a symptom. It is the predictable outcome of a system that treats human beings as disposable.
We cannot ignore this any longer. Every time we buy a cheap punnet of strawberries or a bag of salad, we should ask: who picked this? At what cost? The answer is too often a life broken on the altar of profit. For the four men who died today, the price was their lives. For the hundreds of thousands still trapped in the fields of Italy, the nightmare continues.
