The death of an Indian in Italy highlights the exploitation of workers

An Indian farm worker in Italy has died after allegedly being left lying on the side of the road following an accident in which his arm was severed and his legs were crushed.

Satnam Singh was injured by heavy machinery while working in a vegetable field in Lazio, near Rome, on Monday.

According to Italian media reports, Mr Singh’s employer, Antonello Lovato, loaded him and his wife into a van and left them on the side of the road near their home.

The severed arm was placed in a fruit box.

Medical help did not reach Mr Singh until an hour and a half later. He was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Rome, but died there on Wednesday.

Mr. Lovato is currently being investigated for criminal negligence and manslaughter.

Mr Lovato’s father told Italian media: “My son had told (Mr Singh) not to go near the machinery, but he did not listen to me.”

Italy’s Labour Minister Marina Calderone described Mr Singh’s death as an “act of barbarism”.

Mr Singh, in his early 30s, had reportedly been living and working in Italy as an undocumented migrant for about two years.

The Indian Embassy in Italy expressed its “deep sadness at the unfortunate death of an Indian citizen” and added that it was “actively in contact with the local authorities”.

The Flai CGIL union has called for a strike by agricultural workers on Saturday to protest against Mr Singh’s death. Maurizio Landini, the union’s general secretary, said: “We are faced with a situation of real slavery. The death of a worker – an undocumented worker – is of unprecedented gravity.”

The area where Mr Singh worked has large agricultural holdings and a sizeable Punjabi and Sikh population, many of whom work as agricultural labourers.

Throughout Italy, undocumented workers are often subject to a system called “caporalato“” – a gangmaster system in which middlemen illegally hire workers who are then forced to work for very low wages. Even workers with regular papers often receive far less than the legal wage.

According to a study by the Italian Statistics Institute, almost a quarter of the agricultural workforce in Italy was employed in this way in 2018. Workers in the service sector and in the construction industry are also affected by this practice.

The exploitation of Italian and immigrant farm workers is a well-known problem in Italy.

Thousands of people work in the fields, vineyards and greenhouses across the country, often without contracts and in extremely dangerous conditions.

Workers often have to pay their employers for transport to and from remote fields. Many live in isolated huts or slums and usually have no access to schools or medical care.

The practice of caporalato was banned 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, it has proven difficult to completely end the exploitation of agricultural workers.

In 2018, 16 farm workers were killed in two traffic accidents in the Apulia region.

In both cases, trucks carrying tomatoes collided with vans carrying workers home after work. The deaths led African migrant workers to go on strike in protest against poor working conditions.

And earlier this month, two people were arrested in Puglia for caporalato after it was discovered that they had recruited, underpaid and exploited several dozen workers.