October 13, 2014.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making Headlines:

Ekurhuleni residents will soon be able to pay for their municipal services while doing their shopping.

Liberia’s healthcare workers’ strike could hurt Ebola efforts.

And, Oscar Pistorious faces sentencing over his girlfriend’s death after a divisive trial.

Ekurhuleni residents will soon be able to walk into major malls around the city and pay for their municipal services while doing their shopping.  The city’s chief financial officer Ramasela Ganda said the city is reviving its revenue enhancement drive and will soon introduce payment kiosks at local malls and the OR Tambo International Airport, where residents can view and pay their municipal accounts.  

Ganda said the first batch of 22 kiosks have been procured and will soon be distributed to malls once internal processes have been completed.  He said this revenue enhancement was in addition to the city’s existing reliable and quick online platform to view and pay for municipal accounts. The e-siyakhokha platform has proven to be convenient for both residents and business owners.

Member of the Mayoral Committee for Finance Moses Makwakwa said the platform brings to an end an era of erroneous cut-offs. He said the service provided confirmation of payments and matched the payment to the statement, thus ensuring that payments were correctly reflected against one’s account. 

Thousands of Liberian healthcare workers are set to begin an indefinite strike on Monday, which could undermine the county’s efforts to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus and leave hundreds of patients without care. The healthcare workers threatened to abandon hundreds of patients in Ebola treatment units, clinics and hospitals should their demands for better incentives, working conditions and protective equipment not be met.

Secretary-general of the National Health Workers Association of Liberia George Williams said a meeting to resolve their grievances on October 10 ended in a deadlock due to the government’s refusal to meet their demands.

Liberia’s Deputy Health Minister Matthew Flomo said the government was not aware of health workers planning to strike, adding that the government had reached an agreement with healthcare workers in September. Meanwhile, Williams denied any agreements between the healthcare workers accusing the government of trying to divide them. However, he acknowledged that the strike would undermine the gains being made to fight Ebola in Liberia, adding that the public would understand the reason behind their actions.  

Liberia has the highest number of infections and deaths resulting from the worst outbreak of the viral haemorrhagic fever. It has killed 2 316 people in the poor West African nation.

Disgraced South African track star Oscar Pistorius returns to court on Monday to find out whether he will serve time behind bars for the negligent killing of his model girlfriend, or walk out a free man.

After a six-month, on-off trial that captivated South Africa and millions more around the world who admired Pistorius as a symbol of triumph over physical adversity, opinion is starkly divided on the eventual outcome.

Judge Thokozile Masipa cleared the twenty-seven year old of the serious charge of murder last month. She said prosecutors had failed to prove Pistorius’s intent to kill the twenty-nine-year-old law graduate Reeva Steenkamp when he fired four 9 mm rounds through the door of a toilet cubicle on Valentine’s Day last year.

A murder conviction would have certainly carried a jail sentence. Culpable homicide in South Africa can be punished by anything from 15 years in jail to a suspended sentence or community service.

Also making headlines:

The International Energy Agency says power generation capacity in Africa will quadruple from 2020 to 2040, giving nearly a billion people access to electricity.

The US military faces a new kind of threat in West Africa with Ebola.

And, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has urged the warring factions fighting for control of Libya to make peace, in the highest-level visit since an armed faction took the capital in August.

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That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.