Messina is losing 3,000 inhabitants every 18 months, Saturday in the square to say yes to the Bridge: "It can stop the hemorrhage"

Messina loses about 3,000 inhabitants every 18 months, in the last ten years 18,000 Messinians have moved elsewhere, to these figures we must add all those who are still registered as residents but actually live and work in other cities and return only at Christmas and Ferragosto: a serious and worrying depopulation that affects all of Sicily, which has gone from 5.6 to 4.8 million in 25 years with forecasts of a loss of an additional 800,000 in various provinces over the next decade, with the city of the Strait at the top of the ranking.

“Depopulation is due to aging and low birth rates, but above all to the emigration of young people in search of work. It is not an unstoppable phenomenon and the Bridge can represent a turning point for the future of our Region,” explain the promoters of “The Hour of the Bridge”, an event scheduled for Saturday, March 28 at 4 PM in Piazza Unione Europea in Messina, which is gathering increasing support with around forty associations, both to reaffirm the strategic and urgent importance of the project, which has been discussed for some time and can finally see the light, and to reflect on the employment future and the growth prospects of our territory. “We have now become accustomed to seeing our children leave, and soon our grandchildren, towards the North, which seems like the America of the great migrations of the 19th and 20th centuries when Sicilians left with cardboard suitcases in search of hope. We are numbed by a phenomenon that can be slowed and stopped thanks to smart investments like infrastructure, the Bridge, with highways, railways, and ports, is the main road to development, the keystone to revitalize the South and bring our young people back, the brains that flee every day and give them the opportunity to express their talents and potential in the land of their roots.”

The event on March 28 will not only be a gathering of associations, committees, movements, and unions that have already welcomed the participation of various political parties, but also a moment of collective and multi-voiced discussion about the future of the City of the Strait, Sicily, and Calabria. The latter is also experiencing a dramatic situation with thousands and thousands of Calabrians who left in previous years and today often hold leadership positions in various sectors, demonstrating the innate talent that struggles to emerge in our latitudes and is not valued, primarily due to the infrastructure and transportation deficiencies, the mother of all growth possibilities since the dawn of man.

“The Bridge is primarily cultural - continue the organizations that have organized the meeting on March 28, open to all - we have the right and duty to demand the realization of such a precious and futuristic project, which will guarantee jobs and a sequence of synergistic, complementary works, a series of construction sites that will create an unprecedented economic impact.”

Meanwhile, new memberships continue to arrive: Italian American Association, Sicilian Railways Association, Meridiano Future, and A.N.A.P.I. Fishing Sicily (National Autonomous Association of Small Fishing Entrepreneurs), a trade organization that protects independent fishermen and operators in the fishing supply chain in Sicily and has expressed its appreciation: “The products of the entire fishing supply chain need faster transport times more than ever to reach markets in other parts of Italy” - explains President Piero Forte.

Furthermore: “Our participation occurs in the spirit of transversality and institutional pragmatism, fully sharing the spirit of a mobilization free of party flags and focused exclusively on the strategic value that large infrastructures represent for the future of our territories” - write the presidents of ANPAE Mediterranean Strategic Hub (a center for governance and strategic planning of complex systems and territorial development with European and national funds) Carmelo Cortellaro, of the Futura Study Center (a leading entity in the field of Universal Civil Service in Calabria and Sicily) Patrizia Matarazzo, and of the Progetto Giovani APS (an excellence social promotion organization, accredited for higher and continuing education) Simona Matarazzo.