Elderly people standing for hours, families with babies in their arms, workers who lost an entire day trying to renew their identity cards. The CIE open day, heralded as a solution, today in Cagliari resulted only in queues and frustration.
The atmosphere outside the offices on Via Castiglione was surreal: handwritten lists, numbers handed out and then disappeared, discussions to determine who was really "next." "It's like being in a Checco Zalone movie," they say. "By 9:30, they'd given out about forty numbers, and then nothing."
The same scenes unfolded in Pirri and Piazza De Gasperi: lines spilling over the street, counters with limited staff, and residents exhausted. "I've been here for hours and I don't know if I'll be able to get through," says Olga, one of the many people who arrived at dawn. There are also those, like Silva, who are making their fourth attempt in a few weeks: "Today they told me there was a computer problem. I'm leaving empty-handed again."
By midday, some offices had processed very few applications, while in several places there was no official system to manage the influx. "It's a disgrace," complained Maria Rita, who had been waiting in line for over six hours. "In Sant'Elia, they closed at 10:00, and said they could only process 50 applications. Here, we don't even know if they'll let us in."
What was supposed to be a way to speed up the process has turned into an obstacle course.
The final report of the day will be available in the next few hours.
