BUILDING MATERIALS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 23, 13 November 1945, Page 2

BUILDING MATERIALS

J MAIN BOTTLENECKS "We will have a period of travail until we can get men into I he, various industries that are producing tbe goods now in short supply " said the Minister of Rehabilitation the Hon. C. F. Skinner in the course •9 of an address to a conference of rehabilitation officers held in Wellington. "I would like this conference to discuss ways and means: of persuading men to take on this work. The gravest and most important bottle-neck in rehabilitation today is the supply of building materials." Tbe solution lay in obtaining labour for bush work and sawmills. "We cannot get houses any other way 5 " said the Minister. !t is no use trying to tell the ex-servicemen what the difficulties are and the number of houses* Ave are building. That does not give him a bouse and the only way of satisfying him 1 is to give him a house. There are no short cuts. The materials have to be produced. "We must see if we cannot evolve some, scheme, even if it involves additional expense to get men into those industries to produce the materials for the whole success of re--9 habilitatjon depends on those industries being worked to capacity." The only limiting factor in rehabilitation today Avas the shortages brought about by the Avar. There was no shortage of money. Some people if Avood Avas. not aA'ailablc Ave should build in alternative materials: but practically every one he could think of had a cement base at least while patent building materials' were all concrete products. There Avas a bottleneck in cement too ? because there was a shortage of coal. Even if they had all the men needed to go into the coal mines there was a definite limit to the cement that could be produced, governed by kiln capacity.