CITY SLUMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 November 1918, Page 5

CITY SLUMS.

FAILURE 0® THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES. A S '3PATHFUI». MINISTER.

[(Owe Special Correspondent.)!

| _ Wellington, Nov. 20. I When" the member for Wellington | North, who cappens also to be Mayor of Wellington, made some suggestions to the Minister for Public Health to-day as to fighting the influenza epidemic, he brought a atom upon his head. The Hon. G. W. Russell rose in wrath and told the House that the municipal authorities of the 'Dominion, and particularly the City Councils of Wellington and Auckland, had failed to uso the powers conferred upon them by Bailiament; that they had allowed shims and insanitary conditions to arise itt their midst, that they had even neglected to remove buildings condemned by the Health Department, and that the epidemic now afflicting the Dominion was a small thing compared to the epidemic that would have come along if the neglectful councils had been left alone for a few more years. The Minister hinted that the city authorities had put financial and vested interests before the health of the general public, and he sketched a scheme of reform that included the transfer of authority from the cotuicils to a public health body that would fce independent of local interests. The Minister quoted some striking examples of the conditions that lad 'been allowed to grow up in New Zealand s citie3. He said that a father, a mother, and four children had been found living in ono squalid room, the mother dying and the rest of the family bIX Hindus, all sick, had been found in one room. Real slums, dirty, ill-ventilated and noisome had been allowed to grow up right under the eyes of the civic authorities and to become breeding grounds for disease. Mr. Russell believes in striking while the iron is hot, and lie proposes to ask Parliament during the present session to strangle <he healt.i laws in the directions he has indicated.