MUCH VANDALISM

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 5, 1 October 1943, Page 4

MUCH VANDALISM

Partially Completed State Houses Dominion Special Service. AUCKLAND, September 30. Evidence of widespread vandalism committed in partially-completed State houses is being revealed as builders resume operations on these dwellings after being engaged on war work. Some of these houses were in an unfinished state when skilled workers were called away 12 or 15 months ago to carry out more urgent defence undertakings. Now these men have been released from tins mb* l priority work and in many cases they have returned to their house-building jobs only to be faced with a scene ot desolation. , YVindows have been broken by the hundred, electric fittings have been damaged or removed and fittings difficult to replace have been stolen. Structural timbers have been wrenched out am considerable quantities of Umber have been taken from the sections. One builder related how unusually hiU'c quantities of timber had been disappearing from one of his jobs at Mount Roskill. His inquiries revealed that on Saturday afternoon two trucks arrived on tlie job and loaded up. Nearby residents who had seen the limber being carted away said they did not suspect that anything was amiss, us the men with tlie trucks worked so openly that they felt that the builder himself must have sent for the timber.