«For the Book Fair currently underway we had to ask the Municipality of Macomer to
buy toilet paper because we didn't have the resources to do so. It's a trivial example, we realize, but we'll avoid listing the amount of unpaid invoices that accumulate every day in our certified email."
This is the dramatic appeal launched by the employees of the Cultural Services Center of Macomer , during one of the events related to the 22nd edition of the exhibition of the book published in Sardinia, who have been waiting, since August 1st, for funding from the Region, to also pay the salaries and management costs of the center. A situation that risks leading to the closure of the center. An unscheduled event that takes on dramatic and even embarrassing overtones, since the coordination of the exhibition is entrusted to the Cultural Services Center.
The employees then went up on stage and read the document, together with the mayor of Macomer, Riccardo Uda. «The Regional Book Exhibition, which is taking place these days in our premises and with our coordination, spoke this evening about injustice and rights thanks to the presence of the invaluable guest Beniamino Zuncheddu, who with the terrible experience he lived through gave us the courage to speak». These are the first words spoken by Antonella Simula, an employee of the Cultural Services Centre , who continued: «According to the various laws that regulate the functioning of the Centres, it only provides for the disbursement of funding to the Cultural Services Centres in advance of the implementation of the activity programmes».
Addressing the President of the Region, Alessandra Todde, Antonella Simula says: «President Todde, we ask you why the 2024 funding has not yet arrived to date, November 16? In the competent offices, our Director has tried in every way to understand the reason for the delay, but the fact of the matter to date is that the Cultural Services Center of Macomer has not had a cent since August 1, 2024: our coffers are empty and after 4 months we report to you, to our community and to our territory the very serious situation in which we are operating. We continue to accrue debts with our suppliers and we are now in the 4th month without a salary. Despite the difficulties, the entire team has continued to operate regularly, with the strong belief that a Center like ours, in a territory in crisis like that of Marghine, must remain open».
The employees have asked to be heard, to be met. Requests that have so far gone unheard. "We are the Center, but the Center is not ours: the Center belongs to everyone, and we hope that having existed before our arrival it will continue to exist tomorrow, when we are no longer here," added Simula. "For this reason we ask with conviction that, in addition to the regularity of the liquidation of the financing, the law on Cultural Service Centers, and its revision, will no longer be postponed. The current and serious situation goes beyond all our will and will soon lead to the inevitable closure of our services to the public, taking us exactly where up to this moment we did not want to arrive."
In this situation, the risk, according to the employees, is that the Cultural Services Center will become yet another structure in the area destined for closure.
The document was signed by Antonella Simula, Roberta Balestrucci, Maria Francesca Desosrtes, Giovanni Fraoni and Roberto Putzulu. Mayor Riccardo Uda expressed solidarity: "They are right. However, we know that the funding is there, but bureaucratic obstacles have so far prevented that money from reaching its destination."