Sibongakonke Shoba
15 November 2007
Johannesburg — THE executive committee of the 2010 Soccer World Cup local organising committee will meet eThekwini city manager Mike Sutcliffe today to discuss the strike at the Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban.
About 600 construction workers marched from the stadium to Durban's City Hall yesterday.
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) KwaZulu-Natal organiser Bonginkosi Mncwabe said the union planned to disrupt the preliminary draw for the World Cup to be held at Durban's International Convention Centre on November 25 if workers' grievances were not addressed .
About 3000 international and local delegates are due to attend the draw, the first held in Africa.
Addressing workers outside the Durban city hall, Mncwabe said: "If no agreement is made there will be disruptions at the preliminary draw next week."
The strike has halted work on the stadium for more than a week.
Workers are demanding a project bonus of R1500 a month each and that subcontractors meet minimum wage requirements for the civil engineering sector. Workers also want to elect a full-time safety compliance worker as they are unhappy with the 15 safety compliance officers provided by the consortium building the stadium.
The NUM, which represents workers, has threatened to go on a secondary strike next week that would halt construction at all World Cup stadiums if the matter was not resolved this week.
Although experts in the construction industry have warned that none of the stadiums would be completed on time if work stoppages continued, organising committee CEO Danny Jordaan said the strike in Durban was not a threat to preparations for the tournament.
Jordaan said yesterday in Johannesburg that the committee was "quite comfortable" about the situation in Durban as a lot of work had already been done.
Jordaan described progress of the construction of stadiums in Durban and Johannesburg as "flying".
"Here (FNB stadium in Johannesburg) constructors are six weeks ahead of schedule. That shows there is real commitment," said Jordaan.
He said the meeting with Sutcliffe would bring the committee up to date with negotiations between workers and employers so that they could decide what steps to take. "We will contact Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions) to get a full briefing on what the issues are."
He said the committee hoped the matter would be resolved immediately .
Jordaan refused to "speculate" on what steps the committee would take if the strike by NUM members spread countrywide.
"We will have to meet Sutcliffe first to discuss this matter," he said.
Sutcliffe and Cape Town mayor Hellen Zille are expected to brief the organising committee's executive today on progress made on the construction of the stadiums in their cities.
Committee spokesman Tim Modise said that the construction of stadiums in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth was not going as well as those in Durban and Johannesburg.
"They are working to a very tight schedule, but the situation is expected to improve," he said.
The NUM has accused some of the subcontractors of paying workers only R6 an hour but this has been denied. With Sapa
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