WIVES AND WORK

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 178, 21 March 1932, Page 2

WIVES AND WORK

! PROBLEM OF SEPARATION | IN PUBLIC) WORKS CAMPS. | DEPARTMENT AL ATTITUDE. | Not the least of the problems of the I day is the separation of husbands and i families, involved in the cessation of | Public Works and the search for other i works elsewhere. I Questioned in the House of Repre- ! sentatives, by Mr. R. Semple, as to I whether workers dismissed by the ) Public Works Department at Galatea (on the Rangitaiki, in the Bay of • Plenty hinterland) would be conveyed back to their families, the Minister of Public Works, Mr. Coates, is reported to have said: — • "Their families were on the Gis-borne-Waikokopu section of the East Coast railway, but he could not see his way clear to pay the travelling expenses of the men in order to enable them to return home." Reading between the lines, it would seem that these men were working, and their families were housed, on the East Coast ( Napier- Wair oa-Wai-kokopu-Gisborne) railway works when Parliament decided to stop railway construction. Many workers dismissed from this big job went away seelcing work, leaving their families in the Public Works camps and villages. These camps and villages may be seen along the railway works south of Wairoa (as at Kotemaori) and on the less advaneed works between Waikokopu and Gisborne. Long rows of houses and huts, some empty, some tenanted, indicate that the spirit of active work has fled from what was recently a human hive, but that some of the women and children remain, the latter at any rate being generally in evidence as the passer-by travels per motor along the highway. Huge railway viaducts have been built-— and one of these actually carried the road traffic when the earthquake temporarily closed the road to motor vehicles — but the big Mahaka viaduct that wpuld have linked Wairoa with Napier remains unerected. The whole scene, from the mechanic as well as the human standpoint, is tragic. Getting back to the Minister's remarks — it seems that the men cotieerned first lost their Public Works jobs on the East Coast railway, and now they have lost their Public Works jobs at the Government-purehased Galatea Estate (lately under roading and development for farming) and there is no money to convey them back to their families in the East Coast camps or to convey their families to them. For the families, a housing problem has been created which hardly seems to be solvqble unless money is Coming from somewhere tp compiete the gap in the Napier-Wairoa railway. No reasonable person will desire to embarrass any public Department and to expect it to make money grow pn trees. But does not the situation call for a Government statement leSs condensed than the usual dry answer to a question in Parliament?