星空传媒

30

The number of years American contracting official Robert Stein could spend in prison. Stein allegedly stole more than $2m earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq, and took kickbacks worth more than $1m in the form of cash, cars and sexual favours.

He is the first official to plead guilty of corruption in a US audit of the Coalition Provisional Authority. He was in charge of $82m worth of contracting. He could not let packages worth more than $500,000 at a time, but steered more than $8m of work, such as the demolition of a police academy, to a company owned by a co-conspirator. He also smuggled cash out of the country in suitcases. In 1996 Stein spent eight months in prison for fraud.

235

The number of shelters built so far for 67,500 people left homeless by the December 2004 tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia. There were supposed to be 16,000 of them ready by this month, but construction has been delayed because none of the local timber available has come from legal, sustainable sources. "We prefer to use timber from outside Indonesia," said Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, who heads the government's Aceh reconstruction agency. "The only available sources of timber are from Africa, the rest ... will endanger protected forests." The homeless will have to stay in their tents for now. The government is setting June as a new deadline. Illegal logging is rife in Indonesia, but government is trying to stop it, as 78,000 permanent homes are scheduled for construction.

176,900

The record number of young people who started apprenticeships this year, according to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). The LSC is calling it a "resurgence" of the time-honoured training model, and says 130,000 businesses, many of them construction firms, have taken on apprentices. Even better, a greater number of apprentices are seeing their programme through to the end. In October CM reported on the low number of completions, but there are signs of improvement. In 2002/2003, only 17% finished. That went up to 22% in 03-04 and nearly doubled to 41% in 04-05, according to the LSC's latest figures. The LSC says

apprenticeships are important as a way of tackling skills gaps in all industry sectors, and will spend 拢800m per year in funding them.

292,000

The number of workers Britain has welcomed so far from the 10 eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004, drawing praise from EU employment commissioner Vladimir Spidla, who said last month that these skilled and eager workers were helping keep growth high and mortgage rates low. He chided countries like France and Germany, who exercised their right either to delay opening their borders or to restrict the number of foreign workers coming in. He said construction was the main beneficiary of the boosted labour supply. Ireland took first prize. It opened its arms to 160,000 workers, the highest number as a proportion of its population. Spidla pleaded with "Old" Europe to realize the tax and other benefits of accepting the workers who were probably there illegally anyway.

27m

The amount in pounds the Department of Trade and Industry paid American engineering firm Bechtel over three years to help it set up the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), according to government and corporate monitor SourceWatch. The NDA, formed last April, is a government agency in charge of dismantling the UK's ageing nuclear power stations and dealing with the radioactive waste. It is a 拢56bn job, which the NDA will be letting out to the private sector. Under a Freedom of Information Act request, the DTI disclosed that Bechtel, who is expected to bid for a substantial portion of that work, advised it on forms of contract, management systems, training and the overall design of the NDA.