£450,000 SPENT ON PLANT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22504, 12 September 1938, Page 8

£450,000 SPENT ON PLANT

PUBLIC WORKS MACHINERY “NO LOSS OF LABOUR FROM MECHANISATION” The expenditure for plant recently purchased by the Public Works Department totalled £450,000, including sums for Diesel crawlertype excavators and drag-lines, tractors and road-building equipment, Diesel locomotives, winches and graders, and jSheumatic-tyred scrapers. Reviewing the effects of the mechanisation plan which he has developed, the Minister for Public Works, the Hon. R. Semple, gave these details and emphasised that the plant had been selected on the basis of competitive tenders. “The extension of the scope of the work now controlled by the department has made it necessary to develop our mechanisation plan still further,” Mr Semple said, -“and in conformity with the directions of the Government all suitable projects are being mechanised as far as possible. It should be borne in mind that the specifications for this plant are prepared in the light of the considerable experience which we have now had of highlymechanised operations, and enables only the most suitable machines to be selected for New Zealand conditions, from competitive tenders received from both British and foreign manufacturers.”

The Minister said that the following works in New Zealand in varying degrees were equipped with suitable plant: roads and highway construction and maintenance, irrigation schemes, railway-construction works, aerodromes, swamp-drain-age, harbour and river improvement works, bridges _ and level-crossing ramps, quarrying, electric-power supply undertakings, transmission lines, naval defence works. “New Zealand Made” The Minister mentioned the success of a type of Diesel road-grader designed by his department and manufactured in New Zealand. He said it was giving highly efficient and economical service, and compared favourably with imported types. The total number of New Zealand-built graders in operation would shortly reach 82. Mr Semple emphasised that while it might have been assumed that the introduction of so much new plant would reduce the number of men employed on public works, that had not been the case. The Government’s mechanisation policy absorbed the available men in the increased number of projects that were / possible, and that could be undertaken at a cost no greater than the cost in the past of one project undertaken with manual labour, unassisted by. modern machinery. The average number of men employed, had increased, as a matter of fact. In 1935-36 the figure was 12,889; 1936-37, 17,452; 1937-38, 19,881.