He hasn't left home since 2018 . And he didn't even do it in the difficult moments of the pandemic to get vaccinated. But the state does not look anyone in the eye and, despite turning 100 in June, Severina Utzeri was handed a fine of 100 euros at her home in Masone Pardu, in the Castiadas hamlet . The spry granny didn't take it well and, with the help of her family, she filed an appeal.
When the postman knocked on the door of his house in Masone Pardu - Castiadas village surrounded by greenery - Severina Utzeri, who turned one hundred last June 2, thought of the new health card. "Finally, I've been waiting for you." Inside the envelope branded by the Revenue Agency, instead, the bitter surprise : "Start of the sanctioning procedure for non-compliance with the vaccination obligation". Translated: a hundred euro fine because, in fact, he did not get the anti-Covid vaccine. Severina, achy but very lucid, didn't take it well. «Ma itta funti cicchendi a mei, una female de cent'annusu. No ant'essi maccusu, but what do they expect from me, a hundred-year-old woman. Aren't they crazy?"
The fine
Gigi Simbola, the son who read her the letter (Severina has three children, the other two are Elena and Mario), explains that unfortunately that fine is true. The mother - an upright woman originally from San Vito who dedicated her whole life to the home and family, always respecting any law - was disappointed: "But where do I get it from - she repeats in Sardinian - this money? I don't want to believe it." Not even the son wants to believe it, or rather, he doesn't think it's right that the mother was sanctioned : «We're talking about a centenarian who hasn't left home since 2018 – explains Gigi. We thought it appropriate not to subject her to the vaccine procedure, precisely because, apart from the age she has reached, she lives in the open countryside without coming into contact with anyone except us, the children and the caregiver ».
In the township
Severina moved to the quiet village of Masone Pardu in 1956 together with her husband Oreglio, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 98 . Both from San Vito, they were married ten years earlier. In 1952 Oreglio, a war veteran (he was discharged on 12 September 1945, he returned to San Vito on foot after disembarking at the port of Cagliari), found a job in Castiadas as an Ersat employee. Among the many curiosities, even Oreglio in 2017, now 96 years old, found himself fighting against the Italian bureaucracy: for the five years he spent at the front, the State granted him an annuity, but of just 15 euros a month: «This is it – he repeated – gratitude for those who have served the country with love and sacrifice?».
In family
Severina, on the other hand, spent a lifetime working in the fields and taking care of the household chores. She has never missed a bill to pay or a deadline : «Besides never having received a fine in her entire life – recalls Gigi – she has always been fussy and precise. Even today we remember the amount of the last electricity bill and the expiry of the next one. The truth is that this time, as soon as I read the contents of the letter from the Ministry of Health, she was really upset. I'm sorry too."
The appeal
Gigi Simbola has already forwarded the complaint in his mother's name to the vaccination service of the ASL of Cagliari : «In reference to your sanctioning procedure for the missed vaccine - reads the document dated November 14th - I declare, given my venerable age, that I not being aware of the current regulations regarding Covid and always being at home since 2018. Therefore I add that I have never caught Covid and have not infected it. Confident in a positive response, I send my greetings.
The son knows that the sanction is triggered automatically «but is it possible – Gigi Simbola asks again – that there is no human control to prevent a hundred-year-old woman from receiving an envelope with the initiation of the sanctioning procedure? I believe that centenarians are a heritage of humanity and that they must be protected in every way. In this case, the State has taken the opposite direction".
John Agus
