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dam-l LHWP labor problem/LS
>From Business Report:
Marc Hasenfuss - (Thursday October 01, 1998)
South Africa could face a new set of complications on
the already difficult Lesotho Highlands
Water Project.
The project's security appears to be stabilising,
with roads to the sites now open and workers returning for work. The
difficulty is getting the contractors, many of them foreign nationals, back
on site. Apparently they are dutifully heeding instructions from their
embassies to stay out of the country. And the holiday could be fully paid,
courtesy of South
Africa's water users.
South Africa's little intervention has already
created one set of clear victors: the marauding hoards of lawyers
descending on the mountain kingdom to make their fortunes in insurance
claims and civil suits.
One legal target could well be the Trans Caledon
Tunnel Authority, which funds the highlands project. The contractors had a
very good excuse for not working last week and can justifiably claim to
have lost piles of money through the
enforced break.
Word has it that the government's more astute legal
minds are already brushing off their old law books.
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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