No Problems In Servicemen’s Settlement On West Coast

Grey River Argus, 9 October 1948, Page 4

No Problems In Servicemen’s Settlement On West Coast

Yesterday representatives of the Rehabilitation Board and Lands and Survey Department met representatives of the farming sub-committees of West Coast Rehabilitation Committees to discuss problems in connection with the settlement of returned servicemen on the land on the West Coast.

Mr J. J. Granville, a member of the Rehabilitation Board, and Mr G. I. Martin, of Head Office of the Lands and Survey Department, were the visitors.

Last night Mr Granville stated that there was no real land settlement problem on the West Coast, where approximately 60 ex-servicemen have already been settled on the land. A further 20 remain to be settled, and there is ample land available, so that no future difficulties are expected in completing their settlement. “As a Board we feel that there is a certain amount of scope for closer settlement generally on the West Coast’’, stated Mr Granville last night. “It is our intention to utilise for soldier settlement any, available land which may be suitable”. A good deal of the land available, Mr Granville explained, required development, and as soon as materials became available, it was the Board’s intention to proceed with the development and to bring men from outside areas to the West Coast for settlement purposes, if this is necessary. NEW ZEALAND SETTLEMENT Mr Granville said that to date the Rehabilitation Board had some 5700 servicemen throughout New Zealand settled on the land, 1150 of whom had been settled under the auspices of the Land Settlement Board, with the option of freehold or leasehold titles. The Board was steadily pressing ahead with the preparation and development of land for servicemen generally, but the chief difficulty at present was the acute shortage of wire and the construction of housing on rural develooment blocks. New Zealand, said Mr Granville, had imported since the war less than, one-third of her normal annual importation of wire during the pre-war period. The Government was making every effort to secure wire from any source in any part of the world.