Naples Mayor: Water Company to Stay Public, Blames Enel for Metro Woes

Naples Mayor Gaetano Manfredi has moved to reassure citizens about the future of the city's water service company, ABC. He stated that the company will remain 100% publicly owned, as mandated by law, dispelling concerns about potential changes in its legal status.

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Abc is a company that is 100 percent public and will remain public by law and cannot change.

Manfredi also addressed recent disruptions on Metro Line 1, attributing the problems to issues with the Garibaldi square power substation managed by Enel. "Enel put us in great difficulty yesterday because the Garibaldi square substation, due to a series of works and problems, could not power the network," he explained. He emphasized that the fault lay with the energy provider, not the public transport company ANM.

"The company guaranteed us that from today things will work regularly, and we hope they will not happen again, but it is not ANM's responsibility," Manfredi reiterated. Following yesterday's repeated faults, the metro line resumed normal service this morning. ANM announced that work on the Piscinola-Colli Aminei section, which will close the line, has been postponed from June 22 to June 29. The work is still scheduled to conclude on September 14.

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Enel put us in great difficulty yesterday because the Garibaldi square substation, due to a series of works and problems, could not power the network.

Regarding ABC, Manfredi clarified that national law, following a European directive, requires companies managing networks to be structured as S.p.A. However, he explained that for in-house service provision, a company must have 100% public capital. Any change in ownership would result in the loss of the service management contract, a situation he assured would not occur in Naples.

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The company guaranteed us that from today things will work regularly, and we hope they will not happen again, but it is not ANM's responsibility.