By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/uncmp4knuckles083109.html
UNITED NATIONS, August 31 -- An employee of the UN's general contractor Skanska was stopped entering the UN with a pair of brass knuckles with spikes on them, multiple sources have confirmed to Inner City Press. The UN Capital Master Plan, which previously tried to downplay safety incidents in which a person was hit in the head with a cement bar, and where a Siamese connection to provide water to the Fire Department was blocked, has yet to speak on this brass knuckles incident.
Meanwhile, a recent workshop presentation by the UN Development Program's Jan Vandemoortele in basement Conference Room A was so over-attended that fire code occupancy was wildly exceeded. The UN's reaction was simply to bar any more people from entering. Is that what the law requires? Or is the UN claiming that, as international territory, it is not subject to the fire code notices posted on its walls?
The overall trend without question is that the UN Headquarters building is emptying out. But in some cases people are moving in, a result of lack of planning. On the 13th floor, for example, vacated space is being filled by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, sources say, and money is being spent and wasted on renovating offices for them which will only be used for a few months.
On the 17th floor, a team from ERP -- Enterprise Resource Planning -- has set up shop, with a single printer, sources say. People have to wait to exchange a USB plug to print documents.
Over in the Albano Building swing space, a form of crackdown has begun. Since one has to have a differently coded ID card to go enter each floor, collaboration has been become nearly impossible, people say. They tape the doors open so they don't lock, but then face a crackdown, including on small refrigerators they brought to save time and money on lunch. Many such fridges, then, have been left abandoned on the vacated floors of the Secretariat building. Can you say freon, and lack of recycling planning?
It's reached a point, some say, where some say that CMP, rather than Capital Master Plan, stands for Cannot Manage Planning. Watch this site.
