In the Municipality's registry office, the boxes where births are registered for the year that has just begun still remain empty. No new birth certificate. However, around ten deaths were recorded.
2024 is off to a bad start, with 182 fewer inhabitants, with the real risk that at the end of the year the number could fall below 9 thousand residents, as it was in the 1960s. 2023 ended with 9,263 inhabitants, with 28 new births and 115 deaths, but also with families and young people who changed residence.
There are therefore 2,161 fewer inhabitants compared to 1991, when the boom in residents was recorded in Macomer, which amounted to 11,421. There are currently fewer inhabitants than in 1976, when the then President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone, signed the decree that gave Macomer the title of city.
«Demographic decline or depopulation as we want to call it - says the mayor, Riccardo Uda - is a generalized phenomenon on our island, except Olbia and Arzachena, where there is the possibility of development. The problems that our city experiences also depend greatly on national and regional dynamics. We will look for all possible solutions, perhaps with the reconstitution of the industrial consortium and making it operational, linking it to the industrial port of Oristano, convinced that there is strength in unity".
Luca Pirisi, of the Macomer 2030 council group, sees black: «We are faced with a dramatic demographic hemorrhage, the result of industrial collapse. We need a major investment plan to strengthen public services and infrastructure, grow businesses and create jobs. Obviously these are projects to be built at a territorial level, uniting all the municipalities in this vital challenge."
From the majority benches, Rita Atzori sees the problem as complex and difficult to resolve. «The conditions for change must come from Rome. as far as we are concerned, we are working to implement actions that allow citizens to live well in this town, with particular reference to young families".
