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Possible 2010 Strike Will Not Affect Stadia Deadlines |
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Written by sintim
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Friday, 03 July 2009 |
 The possible strike by construction workers will not affect the deadline to have 2010 FIFA World Cup stadia completed six months ahead of the tournament.
"We are confident that the stadia will be completed six months before the tournament and we will deliver on the FIFA's requirements," said Organising Committee Chairperson Dr Irvin Khoza.
He was addressing the media following a meeting of board members of the Local Organising Committee on Thursday.
Dr Khoza said the LOC board's executive committee would be meeting with the respective unions to engage on various issues concerning the workers.
Construction workers at World Cup stadiums, including Soccer City in Johannesburg and Moses Mabida Stadium in Durban, are planning to down tools next Wednesday. They are demanding a 13 percent wage increase and to be put on formal skills, training and development programmes.
The current offer by employer body, represented by the South African Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors (Safcec), is 10 percent.
Dr Khoza told reporters that although it was vital to resolve the dispute, the LOC had no intention of interfering with the workers construction workers' constitutional rights.
He further said that during the 2008 World Cup in France there had also been a strike which resulted in a complete collapse of the transport system a week before of the event.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 03 July 2009 )
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Written by sintim
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Friday, 03 July 2009 |
 THE Namclay Bricks and Pavers factory at Uis currently employs 45 people and produces 40 000 face bricks a day.
They are looking at increasing production to 80 000 bricks a day and employing 65 people.
The factory, which was started four years, ago uses a by-product of the old Uis tin mine.
The mine was abandoned about 20 years ago and the mine dumps were left unattended. The factory uses these tailings to make bricks harder and more resilient than other bricks.
The factory does not only recycle the mine tailings but also left-over coal from NamPower.
When the bricks are made they need to be fired. They are stacked in piles of over 420 000 bricks, with alternating layers of coal and wood.
The pile is then covered in clay, ignited and left to burn for two weeks, after which the outer layer is removed and the bricks packed.
The left-over coal from NamPower is unusable for any other purpose.
The bricks are packed into old sugar bags before being transported. These bags are used only seven times for the transportation of sugar and after that they are destroyed.
Namclay Bricks and Pavers can use these old bags another seven to eight times.
The factory does not only breathe life into the small town of Uis but is also a shining example of recycling at its best. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 03 July 2009 )
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Sambo's Politics of Local Govt Tours |
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Written by sintim
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Friday, 03 July 2009 |
 Governor Namadi Sambo of Kaduna State recently concluded tours of the 23 Local Government Areas of the state. During the tours, he commissioned some completed projects and held stakeholders' meetings in what was described as an exercise in political accountability by the governor's camp. But on the part of Sambo's political foes, the tours were nothing short of unwarranted hype for his re-election bid.
For a governor who ascended power on the promise to better the lives of the people of his state, the recent month long Local Government tours were intended as a self auditing exercise to ascertain how far he had lived up to his electoral promises. Besides, the tours were designed as response to the appeals by some Local government Councils for the governor to visit their areas and commission some of the completed projects in their constituencies. The exercise in a way was designed as part of the governor's mid-term anniversary projects commissioning intended to hype some of his major achievements in office so far. The tours therefore enabled the governor a unique opportunity to come face to face with the electorates, interacted with them, prioritise their developmental needs and design collective strategies to attain such needs within the constraints of available state resources.
Altogether, 58 projects were on the scoresheet for commissioning during the tours. Among these were dams, health clinics, police stations, roads, markets, electrification projects, school buildings, water schemes, skills acquisition centres, cottage industries and distribution of poverty alleviation materials.
Except perhaps for a few Local Government Areas like Lere and Sabon Gari, where there were reported cases of skirmishes, the tours can reasonably be described as very successful going by the enthusiasm shown by the people to welcome the governor everywhere he visited. In Lere Local Government Area, the crisis resulted from local political rivalry between two contending power camps within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) known as the "Tiger" and the "Lion" groups.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 03 July 2009 )
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