RETRENCHMENT.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 278, 3 December 1901, Page 2

RETRENCHMENT.

STOPPAGE OF PUBLIC WORKS,

By Telegraph—Press Association. New Plymouth, last night

The Taranaki Herald’s correspondent at Tongaporutu telephones that eleven men engaged in road-making under the Government were discharged on Saturday, and others further north have also bean discharged.

Auckland, last night. The position with regard to the discharge of men from the works on the northern end of the North Island Trunk Railway becomes daily more extraordinary. Several men who were employed on the line state that at least three hundred men out of a total of five or six hundred employed were last week dismissed without any explanation. The work is for the most part carried on by co-operative contracts, the parties being divided into six men. The statement made that the men dispensed with had completed their contracts is denied by the men themselves. In nearly every instance the contracts were far from completed when the men were discharged. All single men employed have had their services dispensed with, and only married men remain. The men canseeno reason, unless a financial one, why the number of employed should be reduced. The tact seems to be that nearly all the single men have been discharged, and in place of some five or six hundred employed a fortnight back, and some seven hundred a few months ago, now barely two or three hundred are engaged on works which stretch from Ongaruhe to beyond the Wanganui River.

MORE DISMISSALS,

[By Telegraph—Press Association.] Stratford, last night.

Seventy men have been dismissed from the Ohura road works. Thirty men retained are resident settlers.