https://www.polity.org.za
Deepening Democracy through Access to Information
Home / Podcasts RSS ← Back
Close

Email this article

separate emails by commas, maximum limit of 4 addresses

Sponsored by

Close

Embed Video

Daily podcast – October 17, 2014

Daily podcast – October 17, 2014

17th October 2014

By: Sane Dhlamini
Creamer Media Senior Contributing Editor and Researcher

SAVE THIS ARTICLE      EMAIL THIS ARTICLE

Font size: -+

October 17, 2014.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making headlines:

Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has committed government to building 1.5-million low-cost houses over the next five years.

Advertisement

US medical personnel will soon start staffing Ebola hospitals in Liberia.

And, if labour relations don't deteriorate again, South Africa's economic growth will probably accelerate next year.

Advertisement

Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu has committed government to building 1.5-million low-cost houses over the next five years.  She said the State would achieve this target through the implementation of 50 catalytic megaprojects that would each construct a minimum of 10 000 dwellings. Mining towns would get 200 000 housing units over the next three years.

Sisulu said the megaprojects could generate jobs and build sustainable supportive industries if developed on a large scale.  According to Sisulu, the megaprojects will allow the three spheres of government to work together with the hope that sluggish municipal processes would be brought under control.  

Elaborating on the department’s ambitious 2019 objective, Human Settlements director-general Thabane Zulu said the department had already begun work on identifying the criteria of these large-scale projects. He said they had already accepted project proposals from the private sector.

Sisulu noted that government had already reached its previous five-year housing target of one-million houses by 2014.  
   

 


Sixty-five US medical personnel will arrive in the next week or so to staff a US-military built hospital in Liberia that will treat healthcare workers who contract Ebola. This is seen as a centrepiece of US efforts to fight the epidemic. 

Major General Darryl Williams, who is overseeing the US military response in West Africa, renewed assurances that there were no plans for American troops to treat Liberians infected by Ebola. Instead a team of 65 doctors and nurses from the US public health service commissioned corps will staff a 25-bed hospital built by the military.

Williams said that the medical personnel would be involved in the care and feeding of healthcare workers who have been inflicted with the virus. The risk to health care workers has come into sharp focus in the US after the two nurses in Texas became infected while attending to a Liberian national who later died from the hemorrhagic fever on October 8.  Williams’ comments came the same day US president Barack Obama authorised calling up reserve forces to fight  Ebola.

 

South Africa’s economic growth will probably accelerate next year if labour relations don't deteriorate again and if the global economy holds up reasonably well, a newswire poll has found.

Nedbank chief economist Dennis Dykes said in a survey that the median forecast from 35 economists suggests that growth will pick up to 2.5% in 2015 from an estimated 1.5% this year, assuming that there is not going to be another mining strike this year. He was referring to the crippling nationwide industrial unrest earlier this year.

He said fractured labour relations in Africa’s most developed economy disrupted the mining and auto sectors and hurt business confidence in the first half of the year.  The impact of the fractured labour relations is still being felt.

Dykes went on to say that South Africa’s jobless rate remains uncomfortably high, with almost a quarter of the labour force consistently unemployed since the 2007/8 recession. He said that in order for growth to pick up, many other things needed to happen including Europe avoiding another recession and China growing by around 7%. 

Also making headlines:

Swiss drug maker Roche is evaluating whether to submit its Ebola virus test for emergency use approval in the US, in response to the world's worst outbreak of the disease. 

US President Barack Obama said he was considering appointing an Ebola "czar" to coordinate the fight against the virus in the US, but he remained opposed to a ban on travel from West Africa.

At least 27 people were killed and another seven people seriously injured in overnight raids on villages near the eastern Congolese town of Beni.

And, mining magnate Bridgette Radebe has asked President Jacob Zuma not to sign the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act Amendment Bill into law.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter [@PolityZA].

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE      SAVE THIS ARTICLE

To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here

Comment Guidelines

About

Polity.org.za is a product of Creamer Media.
www.creamermedia.co.za

Other Creamer Media Products include:
Engineering News
Mining Weekly
Research Channel Africa

Read more

Subscriptions

We offer a variety of subscriptions to our Magazine, Website, PDF Reports and our photo library.

Subscriptions are available via the Creamer Media Store.

View store

Advertise

Advertising on Polity.org.za is an effective way to build and consolidate a company's profile among clients and prospective clients. Email advertising@creamermedia.co.za

View options
Free daily email newsletter Register Now