STATE TENANTS QUEUE UP

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 110, 22 February 1950, Page 4

STATE TENANTS QUEUE UP

RUSH TO BUY HOUSES AUCKLAND AND WELLINGTON (P.A.) AUCKLAND, February 21. Queues of State house tenahts formed &t the State Advances Office at Auckand from early yesterday morning jvanting to buy their houses. Inquiries continued to-day but not at the hectic rate which immediately followed the Prime Minister’s statement that Statp houses would be sold to tenants for cash or on terms. The office staff coilld only tell the applicants that the corporation had no details. One man, when asked what he wanted, replied: “I don’t know, but I want to be first in.” “We know no more than has appeared in the newspapers,”- said Mr R. J. Hall, Auckland branch manager of the corporation, to-day. He was expecting more information in this week’s Gazette. Since the announcement of the Government’s housing policy, former servicemen have been crowding into the Wellington district cffice of the Rehabilitation Department, seekiug in* ci cases up to £SOO in the £ISOO bousing loans they have already been granted. ' Large numbers also flocked to the State Advances Corporation office at Wellington to inquire about the possibility of buying the homes they are renting. All-were told they would be advised when administrative details had been worked out. Callers at the Land Valuation Court office included the heads of several Government departments investigating the possibility of getting more office space for their staffs.

GOVERNMENT TO CALL TENDERS STATEMENT BY PRIME MINISTER (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Feb. “My Government will call open tenders for State houses; there will be no more negotiated contracts,” said the Prime' Minister (Mr Holland) this evening.

Nothing was further from the truth than rumours that the Government would not proceed with State housing once existing contracts had been completed, he said. The Government was going ahead with plans to build State rental houses, but only by contract after public tenders had been called. There would be no more, as has invariably been the case previously, of letting contracts by negotiation. It had been found in some cases where this system had been adopted that there was a wide disparity for work of almost an identical nature.

TRANSFER OF PUBLIC SERVANTS (P.A.) WELLINGTON, February 21. The abolition’of the Land Sales Act insofar as it. related to other than farm properties, would mean of necessity the transfer of personnel engaged on land sales work to useful employment in othpr departments, said the Prime Minister (Mr Holland) this evening. There would be no sense, he said, in abolishing part of the< act and keeping in office and paying the salaries attached thereto of civil servants whose job it was to perform tasks connected with the act which no longer required doing.