WATERFRONT SPEED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 216, 11 September 1940, Page 6

WATERFRONT SPEED.

Complaints and protests against inefficiency on the waterfront have been frequent and loud for many years, but if the hopes expressed by the chairman of the Waterfront Control Commission are realised, a change is about to take place which will justify the description of startling. The method of co-operative contracting has been tried at Wellington, Picton, Timaru and the Bluff, and according to Mr. Price the increase in the speed of handling cargoes has ranged "from 9 per cent to 90 per cent." A method which enables such increases in speed to be recorded would 'seem to need no further advertisement, though it is impossible not to wonder what the former conditions were like at the port where the increase has been 90 per cent. Movement must have been almost imperceptible. The new system is to be introduced on the Auckland waterfront to-morrow, and there will be no complaint if it produces an increase in efficiency comparable with that elaimed by Mr. Price for southern ports. The need for the rapid "turn-around" of ships taking food to England is apparent to all. No obstacle should be allowed to delay for even an hour the shipment of produce which, by the time it arrives in the United Kingdom, may be most sorely needed.