The INTUG view on the EEC green paper

This paper is INTUG's response to the EEC's express wish to obtain a wide range of views from the community at large. It specifically handles each of the Green Paper's proposed positions, outlining them briefly and giving INTUG's attitudes to them. In general, INTUG welcomes the Green Paper, declaring a belief that it fulfills its purpose of provoking wide discussion, and trusting that it will result in a positive document committed to firm future plans.     

Deployment of Indonesian migrants in the Middle East: present situation and prospects

"This paper examines the Indonesian overseas employment program. It is limited to overseas deployment through the official channels, i.e. organised by licensed labour suppliers and approved by government authorities. The main destination of this official labour migration is the Middle East. Indonesian officials have indicated that the government aims to increase overseas employment and to shift deployment from houseworkers to better skilled workers. It is argued in the paper that, in view of a shrinking labour market for migrants, even limited realisation of these hopes would depend upon some distinct changes in the overseas employment program."     

State-of-the-art of Russia’s heat supply systems

The paper overviews the contemporary state of Russia’s heat supply systems and fuel consumption within its centralized part, the structure of heat consumption by economic sectors and types of industrial consumers. As shown, the centralized heat supply systems, providing the major part of country’s economy with low temperature heat, have heat losses and accident rate at a critical level. The state of decentralized heat supply systems of low rise buildings is not covered by national statistics at all. A second paper on the prospects and development of Russia’s heat supply systems will be published in a subsequent issue.     

Tourism development in the SADC region: The opportunities and challenges

This article presents an assessment of recent tourism performance in the countries of the Southern African Development Community region, as well as an evaluation of future prospects. It examines growth rates and source markets in developing a profile of current tourism to the region. It identifies and assesses the current and probable future impact of a range of issues and problems, which are serving either to help or hinder tourism development. It suggests necessary actions for facilitating the accelerated development of tourism. The article also analyses the countries' tourism development policies and their competitive standing with other parts of Africa and other world regions from the market's viewpoint. It evaluates future growth prospects for the region by relating these various strands of analysis to the assessments made in the World Tourism Organization's Tourism 2020 vision study. The conclusion is one of qualified optimism: the natural and sociocultural resources of the region match the growing tastes of the international tourism market but, without concerted action to improve international access and tackle the major (real and imagined) threats to tourist safety prevailing in the region, growth rates will continue to be below their potential. The region's physical remoteness from the military theatre of action consequent to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States could well bring the countries of the SADC, and especially South Africa, some benefit from being perceived in tourist-generating markets as safe from these activities.     

An Analysis of Third Party Consumer Complaint Handling Mechanisms: The Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of third party complaint handling mechanisms, based on data obtained from the Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection. Specifically, the study focuses on the types of complaints processed by the Agency, the factors which affect the redress received by consumers and the length of investigation time.