Flood Assistance

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31003, 8 March 1966, Page 3

Flood Assistance

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 7. Assistance is available from the Ministry of Works and the National Roads Board for repairs to flood damaged bridges and roads.

The Minister of Works (Mr Allen) said | in a statement today that financial and, where possible, physical assistance was readily and generously volunteered by the Ministry an d the j board.

Local authorities were no, doubt aware that financial• flood-damage assistance was readily available from the I board with generous subsidy ' rates, and in justified cases] free money was granted. Mr Allen, explaining in the statement the extent of assistance to areas in the Auckland province and Northland recently damaged by floods, said that generally local bodies had been able to cope with their own troubles. The Cabinet this morning approved in principle the granting of assistance to far- . mers in Taranaki, Northland, Waikato and the Hauraki plains affected by recent floods, the Minister of Agri- . culture (Mr Taiboys) said in . a statement. Mr Taiboys said flood relief committees which had been or might be set up in the various districts affected by the | floods were being advised the Government would be pre-: ; pared to approve of the com-1 mittee’s recommendations fori the standard measures of; flood relief. Such measures include: A subsidy of up to £5 a ton on the cartage of hay. A refund of freight charges for livestock removed from the flood area for grazing elsewhere up to 100 miles of the outward I journey.

Government guarantees for bank overdrafts to farmers whose rehabilitation after the flood could not be financed from their own resources, nor other normal sources of credit. Mr Taiboys said the com-

mittees were also being advised that the Government would sympathetically consider a regrassing subsidy of up to £5 an acre in individual cases as might be recommended by the flood relief committees.