SCHOOLS HELD UP.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 January 1921, Page 5

SCHOOLS HELD UP.

SHORTAGE OF CEMENT. MINISTER’S DIFFICULTIES. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, Last* Night. The Minister of Education referred today to the difficulties the department experienced in building schools through lack of cement and other necessary materials. Grants totalling £30,000 were made six months ago for two schools in the Wellington province, he stated, and one was not started yet and the other was being held up and the men discharged because the contractor could not get cement, despite repeated appeals by thb Education Board to the Board of Trade. Arrangements had now been macle for these two buildings to proceed without further delay • “We can’t build schools without cement and we can’t get cement if the men at Taupiri and the other mines go slow,” added the Minister. “One result of goslow, therefore, is the embarrassment of the Education Department in the construction of schools. The Board of Trade had been very fair in allowing the Health Department and the Education Department to build hospitals and schools without special applications .for nerrolts. Hospitals and schools arc placed next, in urgency to workers homes, but this gave no priority call on cement and other materials, and it might soon be a question whether these two departments should not be given such priority of right.”