Is Italy inefficient?

Is the Italian state and society as inefficiently organized as often said?

(Spoiler: yes)

I am an Italian and German citizen. Born, raised and registered in Germany only, I was able to do my EVS in Italy. I chose Niscemi, a town in Sicily, with the intention to learn about my parent's geographical and cultural origin.

Everyone suggested Italy was overburdened by bureaucracy, and that its administration was inefficient: even more so in Sicily. I was eager to find out to what extent this corresponds to the truth, to what it is preconception.

I was confronted with Italian administration and way of working out things in a field where proper functioning decides on life and death: Italy's health service facing the Covid pandemic.

In November 2021 – the virus had been plaguing the world for two years – I asked a guest of mine to carry out a covid rapid antigen-test at home. My friend, it turned out, was positive.

A few days after that we wanted to perform a second rapid test, this time in a pharmacy, so we tried to research where this was possible. After having called pharmacists and public officers, some more, some less eager to help, none helpful, it was my local EVS tutor who told me of a site conducting antigen-tests in Niscemi, open until 2 p. m.

So we arrived there the morning after and asked a passerby, who told us instead it opened at two. We walked around for a few hours, then went back to the white tent, whose walls bore but the lack of a time and contact number. At two it was still empty. Half an hour later a line of cars was forming behind it.

Asking the car drivers, we found out a) that the testing spot did not close neither open at two, but instead at three (at least it did open); b) that they were all parents of pupils previously registered on a list, and c) that you had to appear on this list to get tested there.

A mother in the queue told me of the only two pharmacies which, she said, carried out rapid covid tests in Niscemi. So we went there.

After one of those pharmacies reopened after lunch break, we finally got tested (negative).

„I found you nowhere on the internet“, I remarked to the person who was testing us.

„No, in fact. You had to know it.“

Well, thanks.

The bus system, too, works like that in Sicily – often you have to know things by word of mouth. Yet it is terrifying that even for the covid management the vital information about where to get tested in Niscemi was not existent on the internet.

A colleague told me of how he once checked the medical sector on nepotism: he had went to a hospital in Catania (which is the city my parents came from and where they got to know each other) to do some medical examination, but as he had to go to work afterwards he was in a hurry. From the conversations of the staff he deduced, an influential member of the hospital was not there right now. So he pretended to be his nephew! And in fact, he bypassed the queues and attained his checkup at once. Then they told him: „We've heard your uncle is about to return. Do you want to wait for him or shall we give you the exam results already?“

„Kindly give me the results now, I will talk to my uncle afterwards.“

He received them and evaded the „uncle“.

Similarly weird is how I obtained my third dose of anti-covid vaccination.

For the dwellers without registered domicile in Italy – such as EVC members – „it seems to depend on luck“, as The Local quotes[1]. And it adds an advice: „be tenacious as hell“[2].

I was as tenacious – and it got me into trouble. Read the outcome in part II of this reportage.

EVC: European Voluntary Corps

EVS: European Voluntary Service

References:

• [1] https://www.thelocal.it/20210609/it-all-seems-to-depend-on-your-luck-foreigners-in-italy-continue-to-report-problems-getting-the-covid-vaccine/ (thelocal.it)
• [2] https://www.thelocal.it/20210609/how-people-in-italy-have-managed-to-get-vaccinated-without-a-health-card/ (thelocal.it)
• https://www.thelocal.it/20181212/how-to-beat-or-just-survive-bureaucracy-in-italy-the-essential-pieces-of-italian-paperwork/ (thelocal.it)
• https://lifeinitaly.com/inefficiency-and-italian-bureaucracy/ (lifeinitaly.com)
• https://italychronicles.com/how-inefficient-is-italy-grossly/ (italychronicles.com):

„In terms of government efficiency and effectiveness, out of the 144 nation’s assessed by the World Economic Forum, Italy is in 143rd place – only Venezuela is worse.“

• https://www.limonatalounge.com/move-to-italy/ (limonatalounge.com)

All last accessed on 26.01.2022.