Latest news with #IRR
The Citizen
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Citizen
Trump to be given extra security in SA: ‘Some animals are more equal than others'
Despite South Africa's crime issues being highlighted in a meeting at the White House, the government wants to enhance security for world leaders. US President Donald Trump will receive increased security when he visits Johannesburg for the G20 leaders' summit later this year. Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni on Thursday suggested that American presidents are special and require extra security. 'Presidents of the US are called leaders of the Free World. When a leader of the Free World visits your country, the security must be heightened. 'We are all equal and we are all sovereign, but some are more equal than others, so the security needs to be heightened. '[Chinese President] Xi Jinping being here, you have to heighten the security. If he comes, there will be heightened security, like security will be heightened for all the foreign dignitaries that come through,' she said. South Africa's crime problem Ntshavheni was part of a delegation of South African politicians and businesspeople who recently visited the US to meet with Trump in a bid to reset relations between Pretoria and Washington. It was at this meeting that South Africa's crime problems were displayed in front of international media. During this meeting, South African billionaire Johann Rupert told Trump that crime is also out of control in the Western Cape. He compared gangsters in the Cape Flats to rebel militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ntshavheni faced tough questions from reporters about international concerns over crime in South Africa. However, she said there were interventions to clamp down on crime and all illegal activities in the country. 'There is an acceptance and an acknowledgement that crime in South Africa affects all of us, whether you are in suburbia, a township, or a village. 'The statistics indicated a decline in some categories of crime, such as murder. However, sexual offences, including other contact sexual offences, have increased, including commercial crime, which has also increased,' she said. ALSO READ: Will Trump go after Malema and Zuma? IRR says 'Kill the Boer' chant created problems for SA G20 leaders' summit held near Soweto The G20 Leaders' Summit will be held at the Nasrec Expo Centre just outside of Soweto in November. Ntshavheni said the government was intentional in choosing the location for the G20 leaders' summit. to eliminate the legacy of apartheid-era spacial planning. 'The democratic government continues to develop the Nasrec precinct to serve as a bridge against apartheid spatial planning that separated the developed and undeveloped South Africa, which remains a true story of a South Africa with two countries,' she said. NOW READ: Crime stats: SA records decrease in murders but increase in rapes
The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Corporate diversity policies are under fire from the right – but also from the left
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have come under fire from both sides of the Atlantic. They have been defunded by the Trump administration and in Britain Reform UK has vowed to scrap them in the nine councils it won control of in this month's local elections. But criticism of such initiatives – designed to promote equality of opportunity and representation within organisations – has not been exclusive to the right. Leftwing academics, writers and organisers have criticised what they describe as the shallow corporate exercises that have come to define DEI. The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has been making these arguments since the early 1980s, when the government first commissioned the Scarman report, looking at education and policing, in response to the 1981 riots in cities across England. There have been 12 reports into racial inequalities commissioned by ministers since 1981, often in response to scandals and unrest. Guardian analysis found that of the nearly 600 recommendations fewer than a third had been fully actioned. But some were. Unconscious bias training, as well as attempts to increase representation of the workforce, became cornerstones of corporate and public sector DEI strategies (sometimes referred to as EDI – equality, diversity and inclusion) in the UK. John Narayan, the new head of the IRR, argues that this was intentional. The anti-racism movement in the UK between the 1960s to 1980s was making radical demands on a range of issues, from citizenship and how the UK border is managed, to access to decent housing and education. 'So you had these radical demands, and then normally what the state gives you, is a co-option,' he said. 'We can all do saris, steel bands and samosas … But the radical response was taken out. So the exploitation continues, the bordering regime continues, the everyday racism continues, and the racist policing continues.' For Ash Sarkar, the author of Minority Rule, which offers a Marxist critique of left-liberal politics, this dilution is precisely the problem. 'So much of liberal DEI is bullshit,' she said, citing examples of weapons manufacturing companies having diversity training on microaggressions, while creating products used to bomb weddings in Yemen. Sarkar links the rise of corporate DEI with the decline of trade union militancy, and many on the left, she said, have realised 'representation is a poor substitute for collective bargaining'. 'Representation is inherently passive. Collective bargaining is base-building and empowering – it's less about what you think and more about what you are doing,' she said. 'The latter creates a much more useful kind of political agent than someone who's just waiting to see a brown face in a high place.' Both Sarkar and Narayan, however, caution that the goal is not to pit race or gender against class, but to connect the two more meaningfully. 'The debate around EDI made the class component disappear,' Narayan said. 'We need to reframe those things around the original demands.' He pointed to the successful campaign to end zero-hours contracts, which has been taken up by the Labour government's race and equality bill, as well as the union victory securing equal pay for Jamaican teachers at the Harris Federation chain of academy schools in London, as key examples where class-based struggles intersect with race, gender and migrant status. While Zita Holbourne, a longtime trade unionist and co-founder of the campaign group Black Activists Rising Against Cuts, criticised the corporate DEI model as tokenistic, she said: 'Equality is always supposed to be at the heart of trade unions.' She said corporations often 'set things up in a way that [black and migrant workers] are held back … They do very little to address the people that are held in the bottom, often the toughest roles, the lowest paid, the most precarious work.' Kudsia Batool, the director of equalities at the Trades Union Congress, said: 'There's a real misconception that if you're black, LGBT+, disabled, or a woman, you want something different. No, no, no. Everyone wants the same things: good-quality jobs, the ability to live your life, go on holidays, save a bit of money, live with dignity and respect, and get ahead. 'When we do equality work properly, we're dismantling the barriers that exclude, limit or hinder working-class people from participating in the labour market. That's the bottom line.' Batool was critical of what she saw as performative gestures: 'Too often, people reduce this work to checklists or gestures, like wearing pink T-shirts for a month or putting a black square on LinkedIn during Black History Month. But does that improve anyone's life?' She said unions must focus on closing the ethnicity, disability and LGBT+ pay gaps, securing flexible work, banning zero-hours contracts and ensuring accessible workplaces. 'We need the employment rights bill to deliver in full. We need mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting. These things will help close the equality gaps in ways that EDI, DEI and whatever other acronyms we come up with just can't.' She said it was about who held the power. 'HR policies are important, but they're not enough.' Narayan and Sarkar warned of a darker, ideological project behind the backlash to equality initiatives. 'When people are talking about DEI, they're not talking about the same things. And the version which is under attack by the right does seem to be an all-out assault on some of the gains made by the civil rights era. And what they want to do is roll back on protections from discrimination in a much broader sense,' Sarker said. Narayan said: 'I don't think we on the left should celebrate the end of it, expecting it to lead to some nirvana. [That argument is] very similar to people that said Brexit would allow a leftwing Britain to emerge. You remember that? Lexit? We saw how that played out. 'What we find in the end of EDI is the harbinger of a far more rightwing, fascistic politics.' Some argue that is already under way in the UK, with the campaign against EDI now attacking the UK's landmark 2010 Equality Act. The former Conservative ministers Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg have called for it to be abolished. 'We won't concede ground to those who want to divide and weaken us. And the US has shown us what happens when DEI is defunded. Workers lose rights, they lose protections, and ultimately dignity,' Batool said.
New Indian Express
26-05-2025
- Business
- New Indian Express
Tenders soon for Guntur Inner Ring Road Phase III
GUNTUR: The long-pending third phase of Guntur's Inner Ring Road (IRR) project is finally progressing after years of delay. Stalled during the previous YSRCP government, the IIR project has gained fresh momentum under the current coalition government, promising to ease Guntur's growing traffic congestion and boost regional connectivity. The Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) is preparing to invite tenders for constructing the 4.5-kilometre stretch from Swarnabharathi Nagar to Palakaluru, at an estimated cost of around Rs 48 to Rs 50 crore. This phase will complete the 11-kilometre four-lane highway originally planned in 2005 by the Vijayawada-Guntur-Tenali-Mangalagiri Urban Development Authority (VGTM UDA). The road is designed to connect Perecherla in western Guntur to National Highway-65 near Autonagar, allowing heavy vehicles from Palnadu district to bypass the city centre. The first two phases, covering nearly 6.7 km, were completed between 2010 and 2018, but land acquisition challenges and compensation claims delayed the final phase. With the region now under CRDA's jurisdiction following Amaravati's capital status, authorities recently resolved several land disputes. Compensation amounting to Rs 6.35 crore has been disbursed to displaced families, and monthly allowances of Rs 10,000 are provided to affected landowners. Efforts to clear structural damage claims are ongoing.
The Guardian
25-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
UK Border Force is in effect under military command, report says
The UK Border Force is in effect under military command, reflecting a wider increase of 'hyper-militarisation' in policing, according to a new report on international law enforcement. A report by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death, says the 21st century has seen the emergence of paramilitary and 'political' policing across Europe, employed at borders, during civil unrest and against public protest. It cites the Home Office's 2020 request for Ministry of Defence (MoD) support and the creation within the Border Force of a new post of clandestine Channel threat commander as evidence of the Channel becoming 'hyper-militarised'. Liz Fekete, the director of the IRR and the report's author, said: 'What they have begun at the border does not end at the border. 'First, the government portrays asylum seekers arriving in small boats in an already militarised Channel as a national security threat. The plan to allow French police to push back boats in the Channel can only lead to more injuries, more deaths. 'Second, we know that plastic bullets (still used in Northern Ireland) have already been authorised for use at the Notting Hill carnival and BLM (Black Lives Matter) protests of 2020 and that, since then, BLM protests have been subjected to baton charges, horse charges and pepper spray, and that student occupations for Palestine have been violently suppressed. 'Third, we know that discrete firearms units have been created within crime fighting units (recall the deaths of Mark Duggan and Chris Kaba) and that Jean Charles de Menezes died as a result of the 'shoot to kill' approach of Operation Kratos. 'This is why we are saying to the government today that 'it's time to take stock'. For this is demonstrably not policing by consent.' The report says the MoD's oversight for policing small-boat crossings in the Channel has 'effectively [put] elements of the UK Border Force under military command'. In support of this analysis, it also highlights Keir Starmer's announcement last year that he was giving Border Security Command counter-terrorism powers to deal with people-smuggling, and Drone Watch UK's written evidence to the House of Commons defence committee in which it said that the Channel had been militarised through the use of military-grade drones. Another theme of the report, titled Paramilitary Policing Against the People, is the 'creeping' growth of 'less-lethal weaponry', which can nevertheless cause life-changing injuries, such as Tasers, which were introduced to policing in England and Wales in 2003, Northern Ireland in 2008 and Scotland in 2018. The report discusses 69 deaths of migrants, refugees and other racialised people across Europe through the use of such weaponry, mostly asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa at the Spanish-Moroccan border. The weaponry is often used in public order situations, it says. Kojo Kyerewaa, a national organiser for Black Lives Matter UK, said: 'Only racism can explain the British state's fear of Black people on the streets. 'The Met's 5,900 plastic bullets and 700 officers trained to fire them are not 'public safety' tools. They are instruments of racial terror. When we flooded the streets to denounce police brutality, the Home Office aimed those very weapons at us – weapons proven to blind, maim and kill. This is not an oversight. This is their vicious racist designs against us.' The Met previously said it was 'inaccurate and irresponsible to imply the ethnicity of those likely to be involved in an event or protest influences the tactics considered'. A Home Office spokesperson said: 'Britain has a long tradition of operational independence for the police who keep our streets safe. Any use of their powers is an operational decision.'
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
CRDA to begin final phase of IRR in Guntur
Guntur: The Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) is set to launch the third phase of Inner Ring Road (IRR) construction in Guntur city at an estimated cost of 50 crore. With the Guntur Municipal Corporation (GMC) clearing encroachments along the 4.5-km stretch, CRDA is now preparing to invite tenders for the road development. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The final phase of IRR, stalled for nearly 20 years, aims to ease traffic congestion by allowing heavy vehicles from Palnadu district to access National Highway-65 without entering the city. Initially conceptualized in 2005 by the Vijayawada-Guntur-Tenali-Mangalagiri Urban Development Authority (VGTM UDA) — CRDA's predecessor — the IRR was designed to connect Perecharla (western Guntur) with NH-65 (eastern Guntur near Autonagar) through an 11-km four-lane highway. Due to land acquisition challenges, the project was executed in phases, with only 7 km completed over the past two decades. Despite multiple government transitions, the final phase remained incomplete. Following the TDP-led NDA assuming power, Union minister Pemmasani Chandrasekhar took the initiative to push CRDA authorities to complete the IRR, addressing Guntur's growing traffic woes. Dr. Pemmasani also secured four Railway Over Bridge (ROB) projects, including one linked to the IRR, from the Union highways and road transport ministry. With the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) now preparing to begin ROB work, CRDA is keen to accelerate the final phase of IRR development. "We have cleared encroachments and distributed TDR bonds to affected property owners. The road markings are complete, and now it's over to CRDA to proceed with development," said GMC commissioner Puli Srinivasulu.
