OPENING UP LANDS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3220, 18 June 1909, Page 3

OPENING UP LANDS.

ALLEGED DEARTH OF SUR'-*~ VEYORS. The statement made by the Government at the opening up of Crown and Native lands is by a dearth of surveyors is ridiculed at Auckland. In speaking to a newspaper reporter on the subject, a local surveyor said that if the Guvcnment wished it could get plenty of surveyors to carry on the work. "There has," he proceeded, "never any disposition on the part oi the Government to employ surveyors who are in private practice. The Government has expended large sums of money in having turveys executed, bat no share of this ha 3 cmne the way of private surveyors. With the exception of two estates acquired for closer settlement, there are still about 7,000,00 acres of native land in the North Island, and a great portion ! of this is, I believe, ready to be surveyed. Many thousands of acres have been put info the hands of the Maori Land Boards in North Auckland, but no attempt appears to be made to have surveys carried out. It has been stated in Parliament so frequently that the delay has been due to the want of surveyors that it is only just to private surveyors to say that such is not the case. The Government could have all the surveys it wants carried out carefully and expeditiously if it would only give private surveyors a chance. The Maori Land Boards have the power to employ surveyors, but show little disposition to do so. The , only case I know of where a surveyor has been directly employed by a Maori Land Board was to survey a block in the Bay of Islands, and the board only gave it to him after going round privately to every surveyor in Auckland for a quotation." Asked if there was anything in the excuse made by the Government previously that private surveyors did not suit, and that only men trained to the particular work required were able to carry out the kind of surveying the Government wanted, the gentleman interviewed characterised the excuse as "absolute nonsense," and added that there were at least twelve surveyors in Auckland who would be only too ready to undertake any work whicli the Government might requi'-e at ordinary schedule rates, or what might be agreed upon with the chief surveyor of the district.