BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1949 WHY PICK ON US?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 94, 1 June 1949, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1949 WHY PICK ON US?

We are told today that, unless power consumption drops, we are in for more severe power cuts.

It is darkly hinted that we might find ourselves floundering around in the dark at the evening dinner hour like we did last year, with baby shrieking blue murder midst the darker shadrws and the rest of the kids threatening to drown themselves in the black-shadowed waters of the bath.

We are told it is illegal—or if not quite that, punishable —to use electric heaters, when at least a percentage of the fortu-, nate amongst, us who have houses at all have all-electric houses.

We have been told in the past that the trouble is that Whakatane's power ration, allowed us by the Controller, is not sufficient to meet the needs of an expanded community. We believe it.

But why do we suffer so meekly? Are we to believe that places such as Mangakino, for instance, that did not exist at all at the time our power allocation . was fixed should and do have no power at all because of that fact? We have no reason to believe that that is the case. More, we have no reason to believe that any other place comparable in with this one is getting such miserable treatment from the authorities. If there is another such place so treated, we should be glad to know where it is.

We have been told, and have no reason to doubt, that neither the Borough Council nor the Power Board cari do anything to help us. The Controller’s word is law. But what we should like to know is how did it get that way? Who employs this Controller if we, the people, do not? Is the Civil Service paid and maintained by us to work for us or to boss us?

We, as taxpayers, ratepayers, consumers of what little power we can get, have the right to ask when this muddle-headed folly of expecting us to scrape along on a ration based on the needs of a much smaller community is going to stop. If the Borough Council can do nothing, if the Power Board can do nothing, if the Controller will not listen to reason, then let us take the case to the body that controls the Controller. Let us go direct, and united in our righteous sense of injustice, to the Government itself. Let us demand with clear and strongly united voice that all our local bodies, our Chamber of Commerce, our local M.P., support our case to the limit. Let us make it plain this treatment is not good enough, and that we do not intend to have our rightful claims to better service ignored.