OUR SPECIAL.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1055, 4 July 1883, Page 3

OUR SPECIAL.

(BY telegraph.) WELLINGTON, This day. The estimates for Public Works were issued to members this morning. A vote of sixty-four thousand is to be taken on account of construction and land compensation for completing the Patea Railway gap to Hawera. This is the total amount estimated to finish the work, but to show that it will not be all spent within the year, you have only to draw inferences from past experience. For example, I find that forty thousand was voted last year and only twenty-two thousand actually spent on the line northward of Paten. The Waverley-to-Patea section is shown separately in the estimates and I will refer to it presently. Besides the twenty-two thousand spent northward Should' be added a liability of thirteen thousand seven hundred incurred to the end of March, though not actually paid. In other words the line northward of Patea was not pushed on as rapidly as it might have been under the vote which had been passed. lam told that this and other works were not hurried until after the loan was actually raised, as the Government deemed it prudent not to incur- heavy liabilities for many works authorised until the three million loan was subscribed on the London market. The Patea line and other large works have since been pushed on. As to the southward section this is lumped in a vote of twenty thousand to be taken for the line from Foxton to Patea. I find that L 61,000 were voted last year. So far as I can analyse the totals in the estimates, thirty-one -thousand .were -spent on the Waverley-to-Patea section last year, and liabilities for nearly sixteen thousand were also incurred. A final vote of twenty thousand is to be taken for meeting, these liabilities; also for extra expense on the swampy portion near the Boiling-downi Works, and for contingencies. A vote of five thousand is to be taken for completing the surveys for the North Island railway through the interior. A vote of ten thousand was taken last year and only some four hundred pounds spent on this work. Of course this survey could not commencs till after the three million loan was raised. It is very doubtful whether Government can dbcide the route for this railway in time tp get parliamentary authority for raising the special loan of a million. That loan cannot be raised till that particular route is first approved of by Parliament, Roads to open uplands before sale are to have ten thousand pounds in Taranaki province including £1376 for bush land inland of Patea, most of which had been contracted for up to the end of March next. The other expenditure out of this ten thousand pounds will bo for roads inland of the Waimate Plains.