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Indonesia – 70,000 textile workers laid off since fuel price hike
Antara News Agency via Jakarta Post
JAKARTA: About 70,000 workers have been laid off since the government hiked fuel prices recently, Indonesian Textile Association chairman Benny Sutrisno said on Monday.
“The workers are from Bandung in West Java and Surakarta in Central Java. I expect the number to reach 100,000 by the end of this year,” said Benny. “In total, some 500,000 will have to be laid off because fuel comprises 30 percent of production costs, not to mention other costs.”
Benny said that some 300,000 workers were from medium and large industries while the remaining 200,000 workers were from small-size industries.
“Laying off workers is a tough decision to make because of the strong relations with workers and the high severance pay. …
(25 October 2005)
India to take part in Iran pipeline construction
Marked shift from earlier plan of only buying gas
Anupama Airy, Financial Express (India)
NEW DELHI, OCT 24: India has decided to participate in the construction of the $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) natural gas pipeline project. This is a marked shift from its earlier plan to buy gas at the Indian border in view of security concerns.
“The tri-nation gas project will be financed by way of an equity contribution of $3 billion and debt of $ 4.5 billion,” according to petroleum ministry brass in the course of a review meeting held with the Planning Commission on October 13 on the petroleum and natural gas sector. The meeting was attended by petroleum secretary, S C Tripathi, Member (energy), Planning Commission, Kirit Parikh besides other senior government officials. …
“All the three nations have had bilateral discussions on various issues concerning the pipeline project and it is now proposed that the three nations should meet together and have the first set of trilateral talks to firm up their view on the project structure,” the ministry official said.
On the technical front, Iran has already provided the pre-feasibility phase-II report prepared by BHP-Billiton for the IPI project. The Pakistani side has given a preference for a 900 class pipeline system as its requirement of gas would go up from 3o million metric standard cubic meters of gas per day (mmscmd) in 2010 to 60 mmscmd by 2014.
(24 October 2005)
Fuel crisis might shut UK industry, admits minister
Roya Nikkhah and Melissa Kite, UK Telegraph
The Government has admitted that companies across Britain might be forced to close this winter because of fuel shortages.
Malcolm Wicks, the energy minister, made the admission to The Sunday Telegraph just days after the Government lambasted industry chiefs for being alarmist for suggesting the possibility of a replay of the three-day week.
Mr Wicks said: “The balance between supply and demand for energy is uncomfortably tight. I think if we have a colder-than-usual winter given the supply shortages, certain industries could suffer real difficulties.” The admission was made after this newspaper revealed that Britain could be paralysed by energy shortages if the winter is colder than average.
The Met Office says there is a 67 per cent likelihood of prolonged cold this year after almost a decade of mild winters. That, coupled with high fuel prices, raises the fear that industry will not be able to cope.
(23 October 2005)
Behind gold’s glitter: Torn lands and pointed questions
Jane Perlez and Kirk Johnson, New York Times via International Herald Tribune
There has always been an element of madness to gold’s allure. For thousands of years, something in the eternally lustrous metal has driven people to the outer edges of desire – to have it and hoard it, to kill or conquer for it, to possess it like a lover. …
Consider a ring. For that one ounce of gold, miners dig up and haul away 30 tons of rock and sprinkle it with diluted cyanide, which separates the gold from the rock. Before they are through, miners at some of the largest mines move a half million tons of earth a day, pile it in mounds that can rival the Great Pyramids, and drizzle the ore with the poisonous solution for years. The scars of open-pit mining on this scale endure.
A months-long examination by The New York Times, including tours of gold mines in the American West, Latin America, Africa and Europe, provided a rare look inside an insular industry with a troubled environmental legacy and an uncertain future. Some metal mines, including gold mines, have become the near-equivalent of nuclear waste dumps that must be tended in perpetuity. Hard-rock mining generates more toxic waste than any other industry in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency estimated last year that the cost of cleaning up metal mines could reach $54 billion.
Newmont compensated the farmers [in Ghana] who were moved off their land. It is offering training for new jobs, like growing edible snails and making soap. It built new concrete and tin-roofed houses to replace homes made of mud. But the mine will create just 450 full-time jobs. More than 8,000 people will be displaced. …
“The house is O.K.,” said Gyinabu Ali, 35, a divorced mother of five children, who recently moved into her gaily painted two-room house, with a toilet out back, that overlooks several dozen similar units resembling a poor man’s Levittown. “I miss my land where I could grow my own food.” …
The chief financial officer, Mr. Akosah-Bempah, said he was offended by the poor conditions. Most of the company’s taxes and royalties had stayed in the capital, he said, leaving the ramshackle town bereft of the benefits of gold mining. “Sometimes we feel embarrassed by going to Obuasi,” he said. “Not enough has gone back into the community.”
(24 October 2005)
Polite applause for the NYT giving some space to issues that NGO’s like the Mineral Policy Institute have been working on for years. Anyone who wonders why so many in the 2nd & 3rd worlds ‘hate us’ needs to similarly pull their head out of their arse.-LJ
The cost of airing your dirty laundry in public is about to go up
Ben Berkowitz, Reuters via PlanetArk
NEW YORK – It is not only the motorist who has been socked in the wallet by soaring energy prices — people who use Laundromats will also feel like they have been taken to the cleaners this winter. Natural gas, propane and electricity prices continue their march to new heights, and with those higher prices come higher utility bills for retail laundry centers — much, much higher.
“We’re a business that absolutely lives on utilities and essentially reselling utilities to our customers through the use of our facilities,” said Brian Wallace, chief executive of the Coin Laundry Association. The association represents about 14 percent of the 35,000 “retail self-service laundries” throughout the country. Its members are now contending with the prospect of both having to raise prices and install more efficient machines in order to make ends — to say nothing of socks — meet. …
The Catch-22 is that ours is really an industry that serves a segment of the population that can really least afford price increases,” said Patti Andresen-Shew, a spokeswoman for Alliance Laundry Holdings LLC, owner of the well-known Laundromat brand SpeedQueen. …
(24 October 2005)
