Company says no North Koreans at work on 2010 stadiums

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Mar 15 2010 12:44

No North Korean workers were working on Soccer City in Johannesburg, the construction company said on Monday.

Project director Mike Moody from Grinaker-LTA said 98% of the workers on the project were South African.

Of the foreigners working on the project, none were North Korean.

This was in response to international reports saying about 1 000 North Korean workers were in South Africa helping to build or renovate stadiums ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Agence France-Presse (AFP), quoting a South Korean newspaper, said the North Koreans were working at four to five stadiums, including Soccer City in Johannesburg, where the opening and closing ceremonies and the final game will be staged.

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".

The report quoted South Korea's Unification Ministry as saying that North Koreans were working in South Africa.

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AFP reported that impoverished North Korea relied on outside aid to help feed its 24-million people since natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its economy in the mid-1990s.

It said the country's economic woes were believed to have worsened after the regime was punished with tightened sanctions in the wake of its nuclear and missile activities over the past year.

The country was expected to earn tens of millions of dollars from construction projects in South Africa, the report said.

Local organising committee spokesperson Rich Mkhondo said he knew nothing about the workers and referred queries to the cities in which the stadiums were located. - Sapa

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