The report about the foundering of Sicilian low-cost airline, Windjet (August 13) brought to mind another recent Italian media report about how, despite the financial crisis, a semi-autonomous region like Sicily has gone on wasting money on a gargantuan scale.

There may be no direct connection between the two reports but the fact that Sicily is now €21 billion in debt says a thing or two about the immediate environment in which the airline has been operating.

If one is wondering where all that public money has gone, here are some statistics that may help give some idea.

Sicily has a regional Parliament, or Assembly, which is said to have been first convened by Count Roger I in 1097 and is reputed to be one of the oldest parliaments in the world. Each one of the 54 members of this Regional Assembly receives a monthly salary of €10,000 to €15,000, though the Assembly rarely convenes and the turnout is usually quite low.

On top of that, there are lavish expenses and extras: free cars and mobile phones, as well as well-paid positions on useless committees. Nor are the MPs restrained about allowing others access to the public purse, especially when it comes to doling out jobs, as the following example illustrates. Sicily has a superficial area of just under 26,000 km2 and is an often-quoted example of man-made deforestation, which was practised since Roman times, when the island was turned into the empire’s breadbasket. As a result, it is a relatively bare land. Yet, the region employs no few than 26,000 “forestry workers”, one per square kilometre. By comparison, British Columbia, the westernmost of Canada’s provinces, with a land area of well over 900,000 square kilometres and one of the most intensively forested regions of the world, manages to get by with 1,500 employees in its forestry division.

So, if, for the sake of argument, one assumed your typical Sicilian forestry worker to be half as efficient as his typical Canadian colleague and that Sicily was as intensively forested as British Columbia, it would take fewer than 100 people to tend its forests – a trifle less than 26,000!

As I said, it may have nothing to do with the airline finding itself in difficulties but, surely, this kind of environment does not help.