Work resumes on CT stadium

2007-09-27 17:28

Cape Town - Construction of Cape Town's 2010 football World Cup stadium resumed on Thursday, a week after workers first downed tools in a dispute over travel benefits.

"Everybody's back at work," Andrew Fanton, project director for the Murray and Roberts/WBHO construction consortium told AFP.

"Now it's heads down and get back to business."

A policeman was injured last Wednesday when he was hit with a stone in the head in a stand-off with workers who also broke office windows on the stadium grounds.

The workers were demanding company-sponsored transport between their workplace in the Cape Town suburb of Green Point and the train station in the city centre several kilometres away.

The following day, their employer locked workers out of the facility fearing further upheavals as negotiations got underway.

Joe Brown, national co-ordinator of the Building, Construction and Allied Workers' labour union, said the employer had agreed to provide transport as well as a travel allowance to those who qualified.

"We are all happy. I hope we can complete the stadium by 2010 now," he said.

Workers had offered to work weekends to make up for lost time, added Brown.

Cape Town City Council spokesperson Pieter Cronje expressed confidence earlier in the week that time lost could be made up if work resumed before Friday.

"We are still on schedule," he said.

Cape Town's new 68 000-seater Green Point Stadium is to host one of the semi-finals when the world's most popular sporting event is staged on African soil for the first time.

- AFP