An Italian mayor has been cleaning the streets along with his councillors after their town was left with no manual workers, it's reported.

Anyone calling the town hall on the morning La Stampa visited Zerfaliu , in western Sardinia, was told that Mayor Pinuccio Chelo wasn't in the office because he was outside cleaning. In fact, he was sweeping the piazza in front of the local church in preparation for market day, alongside the deputy mayor's father and a town councillor armed with a high-pressure hose, the paper says.

Zerfaliu's last worker retired six months ago and nobody has been hired since then. "We can't do anything - we are blocked by bureaucracy," the mayor says. An employee going on sick leave has caused everything to grind to a halt, according to La Stampa, despite the town having 150,000 euros ($170,000; £130,000) ready to spend on projects for the unemployed.