‘Coega fulfilling white elephant prophecy’ I NOTICE that Pepi Selinga is bemoaning the lack of investors at the Coega development (FTW September 24, 2004). I recall some 10 years ago that industry, including the port authorities, predicted that Coega would become a white elephant because within range of Coega is PE harbour and further north is E L harbour, both of which are under-utilised and have ample space for growth. The fact is that your core businesses need to be given a huge incentive to relocate and until industries such as Sasol, Iscor and other international manufacturers do relocate to Coega, no one else will take the plunge. It was obvious from day one that this was a political manoeuvre to try to artificially uplift the Eastern Cape for what should be obvious reasons. When is our dear government going to realise that you cannot force things to happen, especially something as fundamental as business, upon which people rely for their living. Look what happened to Atlantic Diesel Engines, and my bet would be that Coega is going to cost SA taxpayers billions of rands and will stand as an edifice to the stubbornness and arrogance of the ruling party. Peter Worman, Indian Ocean Terminals, Durban. Are Teta statistics misleading? ALAN PEAT’s article on Teta refers (FTW October 8, 2004). It is my understanding that, although the learnership programme in the Forwarding & Clearing Chamber is under way, the forwarding industry has a long way to go in creating a successful training ethic. So we should not be misguided by statistics. Whilst the numbers quoted look impressive, it would be instructive to know what figures apply by Chamber, as the Teta is a broad based Seta. How many of the 111983 registered learners are from our industry and what was planned for? It could be that the numbers apply more to taxis and trucking companies. For the period under review there was a surplus of R47 million. How much of this sits in the war chest of the F&C chamber? Are surpluses carried over? We are in desperate need of re-doing the Unit Standard structure as it does not meet the needs of the market. And yet we are told that there are no funds for this! And is it correct to say that the Teta disbursed R14 million of its own funds? Perhaps the levy payers could be appraised on how this happens. Chris Richards, Johannesburg
