Indian police have detained the entire crew, including Italian navy officers, over the killings, while Italy’s ambassador in New Delhi was summoned to the foreign office.

An Indian coast guard official said the naval guards aboard the Enrica Lexie appeared to have mistaken the fishermen for pirates.

He was speaking during a presentation to the Walvis Bay Municipality on plans to develop a 40-hectare oyster and abalone farm along the Walvis Bay coastline.  Gross stated that a project of this magnitude could rake in much-needed foreign currency for the country and create thousands of jobs.

“Skills development for Namibians in an industry like this has massive potential for growth,” he said.  Gross said he wants to contribute to bringing the oyster industry back to where it was before it suffered a setback in 2008. In that year, local oyster farming operations were flooded by the ‘red tide’, causing millions of dollars in losses. 

Red tide is a common term used for a harmful algal bloom.  “All the industries in the world that farm with marine aquaculture successfully do it on a very large scale. We want to plant the seed today, but to make this a viable successful project we would need more land,” Gross said. The company is looking into getting an additional 500 to 600 hectares of land near the ocean to expand its operations.

She is one of four sister ships due to sail the line’s Africa trade lanes, and part of a R2.3-billion investment. She will soon be joined by the Jolly Perla, with the Jolly Cristallo and Jolly Quarzo to follow at a later date.

But UAL has just had a positive meeting with TNPA representatives, headed up by Tau Morwe, according to UAL shipping manager, Annalize Krause.

“We are making progress and are in the process of further negotiations,” she told FTWOnline. “We will be able to give more info once these are finalised.”

While President Jacob Zuma committed government to a country-wide infrastructure upgrade during his State of the Nation address in Parliament last week, concern over the impact of strikes on the economy is rising.

Fanie Pretorius, chairman of the South African Shippers’ Council, this week said cargo owners were increasingly concerned about the impact of labour disputes and action on the economy.

“Nationalisation is not ANC or government policy,” Zuma said according to local radio reports, in an apparent effort to give clarity to the business community.

He was speaking a day after his annual State of the Nation address, which focused largely on the economy and job creation. Zuma pledged to invest in a “massive” infrastructure expansion programme and recommitted himself to the mining sector.

Unemployment in the fourth quarter 2011 stood at a 23.9 per cent which, while high, is the lowest rate since the global economic downturn caused South Africa to rapidly haemorrhage jobs. In the coming weeks, the ANC is expected to unveil a fresh policy plan on the mining sector, which analysts say will reject nationalisation but favour a 50-per-cent super-tax on the industry.

According to press reports, a bitumen shortage has already affected about 35 of the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) projects, along with other major road construction projects.

A recent statement by transport minister, S’bu Ndebele, said that more than R1-billion worth of work would not be able to be completed by Sanral contractors in the 2011/12 financial year because the agency “is severely affected by the shortage of bitumen”. So SA is faced with a two-barrelled problem: A lack of fuel to drive its vehicles, and of road surfaces to drive them on.

It said current planned maintenance stood at 4 845 MW and unplanned outages were 5 639 MW. Peak demand for the rest of the week was forecast at: 29 385 MW on Saturday, 29 104 MW on Sunday, 31 337 MW on Monday, 31 376 MW on Tuesday, 31 454 MW on Wednesday, and 31 265 MW on Thursday.

“We urge all South Africans to partner with us to keep the lights on and save 10 per cent of their electricity usage. This will make it significantly easier to manage the power system during this challenging time, while also enabling us to do planned maintenance to ensure the reliability of our plant.” Eskom said it would release a power supply update twice a week to keep citizens informed.

In this, Acoc would like to make more use of the identification verification system (IVS).

It’s the system chosen by the air cargo industry in SA for identifying and controlling cargo drawers and warehouses and both the cargo handlers, Swissport, and the national carrier, SAA, have adopted it.

“We’re using it for withdrawals – and linking all forwarding agents to it. But we’d like to link it to access control at Acsa’s Ortia warehousing – where it would identify everyone entering or exiting the area and for scanning cargo at the terminal.”

The dockers, pilots, tugboats and locks operator will be involved, and that roadblocks with strike pickets will occupy all access roads to the ports. Terminals will close from 06:00hrs on 30/01/2012 to 06:00hrs on 31/01/2012.