CONTRACTORS SUFFER HEAVY LOSSES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 133, 26 August 1927, Page 16

CONTRACTORS SUFFER HEAVY LOSSES

THIEVES’ DEPREDATIONS (Special to THE SUN.) CHRISTCHURCH, Thursday. Tho question of thefts from the jobs of contractors for the Christchurch Drainage Board has become serious, and men carrying out the works are becoming worried by the persistency of depredations. Everything goes, and contractors are at a disadvantage, as they have to leave tools, timber, lamps, etc., open to the public. Interviewed by a “Sun” reporter, one contractor said that in two years he estimated his losses from theft at £2OO. The position was unavoidable, as the contractors have to put material on the spot for the works before beginning. As a rule the stuff is scarcely on the spot before it is stolen. One contractor put 1,000 bricks in the street, but by six o’clock the following morning all had gone through the medium of two drays, which residents thought belonged to the contractor. Another left bags of cement and a covering tarpaulin at the works. In the evening a motor-truck evidently came along and took four bags of cement and the tarpaulin, and while the watchman tended one pump took a tin of petrol to be used for the other pump. Another put 1,000 feet of 10 x l|in timber on the job, and in one night 850 feet disappeared. Yet another, out of 300 lengths of timber, had but 20 left after a week-end. Drainage contractors and builders both suffer, the latter losing spades, shovels, ladders, nails and timber fittings. The trouble is widespread, as many contracts are being carried out in the Christchurch Drainage Board’s big extension scheme.