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Italian miner takes 35 years’ sick leave because he’s CLAUSTROPHOBIC – then retires on full pension
- Carlo Cani started in 1980 and is now on a pension despite hardly working
- Accommodating doctors helped the 60-year-old take years of sick leave
- It is the latest example of how Italian workers find loopholes to avoid work
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An Italian miner was permitted to be off sick for 35 years after claiming he was claustrophobic.
Coal miner Carlo Cani started work in 1980 and retired early, drawing a pension despite hardly ever putting in a day’s work over a 35-year career.
The case is just the latest example of how thousands of state workers in Italy find loopholes in the rules to duck out of their job.
Carlo Can’t… An Italian miner was off sick for 35 years after claiming he was claustrophobic. Stock image
Mr Cani admits he took an immediate dislike to mining and began doing everything he could to avoid venturing down the mine shaft in Sardinia where he was employed.
The 60-year-old managed to take years of sick leave, apparently with the help of accommodating doctors.
Over the years he faked amnesia and haemorrhoids, rubbed coal dust into his eyes to feign an infection and on occasion staggered around pretending to be drunk.
He was able to stay at home listening to jazz. He was also granted extended time off on reduced pay when demand for coal from the mine dipped.
But despite years sat on the sofa, he was still officially an employee of the mining company, and entitled to a pension.
Mr Cani acknowledges: ‘I reached the pensionable age without hardly ever working. I hated being underground.
He explained: ‘Right from the start, I had no affinity for coal.’
‘I invented everything – amnesia, pains, haemorrhoids, I used to lurch around as if I was drunk. I bumped my thumb on a wall and obviously you can’t work with a swollen thumb,’ Mr Cani told La Stampa.
‘Other times I would rub coal dust into my eyes. I just didn’t like the work – being a miner was not the job for me.’
‘I had no affinity for coal’: Carlo Cani admits he took an immediate dislike to mining and began doing everything he could to avoid venturing down the mine shaft in Sardinia where he was employed. Stock image
He eventually retired on a pension in 2006.
The former worker’s laziness have caused indignation in a country in which youth unemployment is close to 50 per cent.
In August, in a similar case, it emerged that a Sicilian doctor has done just 15 days work in nine years.
