Another blackout, another dark day for business owners. From 9:00 a.m. this morning until 3:30 p.m., Via Asproni was without power, leaving bars, restaurants, and businesses in the dark and in dire straits. Residents and businesses were notified only via a piece of paper taped to a pole, a notice that many didn't even notice.
Armando Pibiri, owner of the Dorian Gray Pub, denounced the gravity of the situation by expressing his anger in a video: "I arrived at 9 a.m. and found the power out; the entire street is without electricity. No official communication, just a piece of paper taped to a pole, which no one saw," he said.
For the restaurant, the consequences were immediate and severe : "All the meat we had in the cold storage room—beef, horse meat, products costing €10-20 a kilo—is ready to be thrown away. The season was already difficult, and now they're throwing away money like this. An intervention can't last from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; that's madness. Service should be guaranteed regardless of breakdowns."
Pibiri's outcry is not an isolated one . The protest is intertwined with the strong stance taken by Fipe Confcommercio Sud Sardegna, which speaks of unsustainable outages: "After the power outages and water cuts that paralyzed Piazza Yenne just six days ago, a new outage is severely impacting businesses in Cagliari. From 9:00 this morning until 3:30 PM, with no warning other than a notice posted on a pole on Via Asproni, local businesses have been without electricity. This is inadequate communication for owners of bars, restaurants, and clubs. In many cases, they now risk having to throw away perishable goods, with serious economic consequences," Pibiri explains in his video.
Emanuele Frongia, president of Fipe Confcommercio, was also harsh : "Once again, we are faced with a poorly managed outage, demonstrating a complete lack of dialogue with businesses. It's unacceptable that the only notices consist of papers stuck to a pole, leaving operators to discover only at the last minute that they will be without power for hours. These incidents, in addition to causing significant economic damage, undermine the city's credibility and the trust of those who invest and work every day to ensure a quality service for residents and tourists."
FIPE also raises the alarm about the ongoing disruptions, calling for immediate discussion with institutions and essential service providers : "We're not asking for the impossible," adds Frongia, "but simply for the certainty of being informed in a timely and adequate manner so we can organize ourselves. It's unacceptable that in a city like Cagliari, a tourist destination, we continue to proceed without any planning and without a minimum of respect for those who represent the beating heart of the local economy."
Meanwhile, on Via Asproni, the damage has already been done : cold storage units turned off, goods to be thrown away, and an entire morning's work cancelled out by a blackout that, once again, left shopkeepers without answers or protection.
