Tuesday, May 18, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Brad Dubbelman

Making Headlines:

Striking Transnet workers are set to appeal to Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele as wage talks reached a dead end. The United Transport and Allied Trade Union (Utatu) and the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) were planning to march to Parliament to hand over a memorandum to Ndebele."The strike is continuing. Indication we got from [Transnet] management is that we shouldn't try and talk to them. We should only call when we are prepared to accept their offer," said Utatu general secretary Chris de Vos. Satawu deputy president Robert Mashego said that he believed there was a need for political intervention to end the strike. Transnet had made an 11% wage offer while the unions had dropped their demand to 12% in failed weekend wage talks. But their main gripe with the employer seemed to stem from salary talks last year, when the unions accepted a 7% offer, only to discover later that Transnet management had received 14% increases.

United Nations (UN) secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has chosen Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres as the new UN climate chief to head stalled international talks, sources close to the matter said on Monday. Figueres beat fellow short-listed candidate former South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, to a role meant to rally global agreement on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol after a disappointing summit in Copenhagen in December. UN officials would present Ban's decision to a high-level meeting of climate negotiators in Bonn. Figueres was Ban's only recommendation to replace Dutchman Yvo de Boer as head of the UN climate secretariat from July, sources said. Ban may make a public announcement this week on a surprise choice over Van Schalkwyk, now Minister for Tourism in the South African government. The scale of Figueres' task is underscored by the Copenhagen summit where 120 world leaders failed to unblock a binding deal, agreeing instead to mobilise $30-billion of finance from 2010 to 2012 and to try to limit global warming to less than 2°C above pre industrial times.

There are thousands of vacancies at South Africa's cash-strapped State-owned enterprises, with Transnet alone looking to fill 4 459 posts, according to Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan. Hogan said that Eskom has 1 228 vacancies, South African Airways 607, South African Express 39 and Broadband Infraco 77. Arms manufacturer Denel has 68 jobs to fill and the South African Forestry Company 135, she said in reply to a Parliamentary question by the Freedom Front. Alexkor has four vacancies. Hogan said that the parastatals have a recruitment policies system in place to fill its vacant posts.

Also making headlines
The Congress of the People (Cope) has 74 631 members, according to audit figures released on Monday.
Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has fired the head of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries member's State-run oil firm NNPC after less than six weeks at the helm.
State-owned power utility Eskom has begun screening a new football-themed ‘Power Alert', on various free-to-air television channels.
And, campaigning starts for Guinea vote amid dispute fears.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.