Several have pitched for construction and renovation of some of the 12 stadiums in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. The South American country last hosted the tournament in 1950.
While the South African government allocated more than R8.4-billion ($1.9 billion USD) for building and renovating 10 stadiums, Brazil will be spending a reported R18.6-billion ($2.6 billion USD) on its 12 stadiums.
Proof of the positive results of the discussions of Sochi’s investment attractiveness was quite around the corner. Even though it’s more than three years to go before the start of the Winter Olympic Games-2014, the city and the nearby territory is dotted with construction sites. Contractors work day and night, and the frames of some of huge constructions to be commissioned already next year and in 2012 look quite impressive. The region has made an emphasis on Sochi’s charm as a Black Sea resort city as well as development of its infrastructure and transport.
“Sochi has always been an investor’s attraction and it remains such especially now that we are getting ready for the Winter Olympic Games. With the amount of attention our government pays to this project, I think investors can be sure of tomorrow,” said Sochi’s Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov.
Representatives of the dozens of countries participating in the Commonwealth Games, a quadrennial competition among members of the Commonwealth of Nations, started arriving in Delhi in recent days to look at facilities and conduct security checks. The athletes’ village, built for the Games, is not ready, they say, and questions linger about security after an attack on tourists in Delhi on Sunday.
On Tuesday afternoon, a bridge next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main Games venue, fell apart. The footbridge collapsed into three pieces, taking several workers with it and uprooting one side of the arch that supported it.
The Novaya Gazeta story focuses on Vladimir Leshchevsky, deputy of construction in the Kremlin's Office of Presidential Affairs – a vast empire that owns about $500 billion worth of former Soviet Communist Party property. It alleges that he took about $5.7 million in kickbacks from the Moskonversprom consortium of construction companies in connection with the renovation of two Kremlin-owned Sochi area sanitoriums.
"To really fight corruption he would have to fire [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin, who is at the center of the Sochi Olympic scandal, but that's not going to happen," says Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and a leader of the liberal opposition who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Sochi in polls last year that some criticized as Kremlin-manipulated. "So he orders an investigation of Leshchevsky, a nobody. It's just a PR action."
The Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit was also reported to be using North Korean workers.
The Mbombela Municipality could not immediately be reached to comment on the report.
The report said the sanctions-hit state sent the workers "in an apparent attempt to earn much-needed hard currency".
According to the director of human resources at the South African Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors (Safcec), Muller Uys, about 70 000 people have done civil construction work for the football spectacle. This included labour on stadiums, the Gautrain and on minor building jobs.
"Of these 70 000, around 70% were local casual labour, which is a legal stipulation, and the rest were skilled or core workers. We have to move the local component around so that they can have regular work. The core people return to their companies and are assigned other projects."
Safcec economist Pierre Blaauw said it was difficult to put a number to all 2010 constructors countrywide but there were about 130 000, with about 91000 being casuals.
Speaking at a briefing this morning ahead of Friday's World Cup final draw, [Mayor Dan] Plato appealed to Cape Town drivers to be patient and promised that the work was ahead of schedule.
...Plato said the roadworks chaos would probably end towards the end of April or early in May, when construction work at crucial points, such as the Koeberg Interchange and the integrated rapid transport lanes on Otto du Plessis Drive, should be completed.
Launched on Friday at Walter Sisulu Square in Soweto, the fund will see tickets being allocated through various programmes run by Fifa partners.
Tickets will go to deserving pupils, workers, teachers, parents and community leaders.
Of the 120 000 tickets, 40 000 will go to stadium construction workers, who will be given two tickets each to watch a game at the stadium they helped build.
[W]orkers on Monday rejected an improved wage offer of 10,4 percent, up from 10 percent, and stuck to their 13-percent demand.
"Employers must expect no mercy from us, they must deliver 13 percent or we will strike until 2011," said Bhekani Ngcobo, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) chief negotiator in the dispute.
An interdict to bar the strike called over a wage dispute for next Wednesday will be sought by the South African Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors on Friday, said Campanella who is the group’s spokesman.
The country’s labour relations body - the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration - has also called an urgent meeting between parties on Friday to discuss the dispute and the potential impact on 2010.
ReptiRescue, an organisation that responds to snake alarms in Gauteng province, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are located, says the upheaval caused by the upgrading of roads, airports and stadiums is driving snakes from resting places.
In the past two months alone, ReptiRescue has had to catch 24 snakes in the Johannesburg area, an unusually high number for winter, when snakes are usually less active.
Last winter, the organisation only had three such cases.
Multi million rand projects designed to take Cape Town to the FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup spectacular and beyond are at their final stages of completion. These include the impressive new Central Terminal Building at the Cape Town International Airport, the Green Point and other Stadia, upgrading of the local roads network and eight new city hotels.
Contractors building the multimillion-rand Green Point Stadium are bracing themselves for a few months of heavy rains and gale-force winds, seven-and-a-half months ahead of the deadline to complete the World Cup venue.
That's according to Andrew Fanton, project manager of the Green Point Stadium construction site.
...Parts of the 68 000-seater World Cup stadium's glass roof were fitted on Thursday and it is expected to be completed by September.
Thereafter, the grass pitch, which is being grown on a farm in Stellenbosch, and the stadium seats will be installed.
Fanton said the stadium's internal finishes, which include the VIP suites, boardrooms, change rooms and bathrooms, will be completed by July, and the external facade by August.
Mbombela's world cup stadium and future sports and entertainment venue will be complete on August 31. This was the categorical assurance given by Mr Desmond Golding, deputy director general for the 2010 integrated office.
He stated that the township development plan was progressing, the surrounding roads system was on schedule and a disaster management centre would be ready by December.
...He pointed out the long-term benefits of hosting the tournament to the country as a whole, explaining that visitors would boost domestic spending. In Germany in 2006, this was equivalent to one per cent contribution to its economy. In South Korea after the 2002 event, the growth rate more than doubled from four per cent to 8,8 per cent and it is still recognised as one of the best global economies.
South Africa's successful bid to host the 2010 Fifa World Cup has proven to be a major catalyst for positive development in country - particularly for the construction industry.
As South Africa gears up to host the biggest single-code sporting event in the world, the construction work is ever increasing.
From upgrading the country's transport infrastructure, hotel and accommodation facilities to creating 10 world-class stadiums which are either being refurbished or built from scratch in nine host cities, local construction companies and their workers are receiving a major boost in tough economic times.
"South Africa's 2010 World Cup preparations have been hit by overruns in stadium construction costs, but all venues are on track to be completed on time, a government official said Wednesday."
"Stadium construction costs have ballooned from 7.8 billion rand (985 million dollars, 660 million euros) in 2004 to 9.2 billion."
"Moleketi emphasised that Nelson Mandela Bay stadium in Port Elizabeth, which was recently excluded from hosting the Confederations Cup in June 2009 due to construction delays, will be ready for 2010."