HEAVY BUILDING COSTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 August 1920, Page 5

HEAVY BUILDING COSTS.

HOW EDUCATION SUFFERS. "THE PRICE GOING UP.*' By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. Replying to-day to m deputation urging that a hostel should be provided for the pupils attending the technical college at Dunedin, the Minister for Education eaid that this request raised the whole question of hostel accommodation. "The want of such accommodation," he said, "is, I am sure, enabling private boarding schools all over New Zealand to get children that we ought to have in our own schools, where they would get a much better education. The only way ito get the State scheme working properly, is by a system of hostels. But a big programme is involved. Instead of an annual vote out of the Public Works fund, Parliament has said that in the matter of buildings and sites, tlmre shall be settled for four years a fixed appropriation of £750,000. I have to do the best I can with that, which is equal only to £400,000 six years ago. That is the sum per annum that is available to meet the demands from the North Cape to the Bluff.

| "All over New Zealand old buildings I are getting worn out and ...replacing rej storation and remodelling are required. Personally, I am keen upon the hostel system, but northern centres, which have no accommodation whatever, have a greater claim than those planes already have some accommodation. The Government has intimated that in time the more pressing matter of school buildings: must bp attended to, but even if Parliament would supply me with money. I doubt if it would be wise of me to flood New Zealand with a big building scheme at the present time. A building that in 1074 Cost £IOOO, will now cost £2200, and the price is going /*ip all the time. Only this morning there were four cases' before me, in which tenders showed that the lowest price in each case is 20 per cent, more than "he Board's estimate of four months ago. We a.re now faced with this extra evpenditure. Sometime* T think it would pay me to withhold all buildings for a time until things settle themselves in the building market, but I am loath to do that."