ROME, July 31 (Reuters) - Discontent mounted on Monday in Italy over cuts to a poverty relief scheme by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightist government that will affect hundreds of thousands of people.

In Naples, trade unionists and far-left activists organised a rally outside the headquarters of welfare agency INPS, while in a small town in Sicily an unemployed man threatened to set the office of the mayor on fire.

They are all set to lose the so-called “citizen wage”, a subsidy introduced in 2019 and due to be gradually withdrawn between August and December and replaced with less generous programmes.

INPS last week sent a text message to roughly 160,000 people to warn them they would be excluded from the scheme - a method of communication that has been criticised as “brutal” by the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, Elly Schlein.

“I’m 58 and I cannot enter the labour market because they always tell me that at my age, 58, I am not (employable), just a few odd jobs, always off the books, underpaid”, one of the Naples protesters told RAI public TV.

The “citizen wage” benefited 1.7 million households and 3.6 million people last year, with average monthly payments per household of 551 euros ($607.81), according to INPS. It had no expiry date provided recipients did not refuse job offers.

The government curtailed the scheme in May arguing that it allowed people to be lazy and live off subsidies, stating that only those physically unable to work should be allowed to rely on benefits.

As part of Meloni’s reform, some 436,000 families with able-bodied people are due to receive starting from September a smaller 350-euro monthly subsidy, provided they sign up for job training schemes, and for no more than 12 months.

The snag is that registration procedures to access the new subsidies are not yet fully available, raising fears payments will not start for a while, leaving people with no form of income support for months.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Luca Ciriani defended the cut, telling La Stampa daily: “Support is there for those who cannot work, but it’s right that those who can, work, because that’s the only way a person can have their dignity. We won’t backtrack.”