Raglan Maoris to spend grant on skills centre

Press, 13 October 1983, Page 12

Raglan Maoris to spend grant on skills centre

PA Hamilton Raglan’s Tainui Awhiro people will spend the $80,000 granted them recently to help buy and move an old Waihi Dairy Company hostel to Raglan for a kokiri work skills centre. The centre will be established on the present Raglan golf course after it is handed back to its original Maori owners. The Board of Maori Af-

fairs recently announced the grant for a kokiri centre at Raglan, to be sited on the golf course after the club moves to its new site, or before if the club had no objection. A tribal spokesman, Mrs Eva Rickard, said she was glad they had got some compensation for what her people had lost. Mrs Rickard said the tribe had already begun the

hostel deal, and the building was sitting in a house mover's yard in Hamilton. But lack of money had been holding up the completion of the move. With the grant, it could be completed. The kokiri centre would form the basis of what she hoped would be a self-suffi-cient unit which would offer Raglan’s young people training in work skills and jobs, she said.