RIVER WORKS
“MUCKED UP” IN HAWKE’S BAY. ACCORDING TO MR SEMPLE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) HASTINGS, August 23. The assertion that arrangements' for the completion of the Ngaruroro River control scheme had been “mucked up,” and that the work would have been tackled in quite a different way altogether if he had had his way, was made by the Minister of Public Works, the Hon R. Semple, this morning. If the river control works had been carried out with the aid of machinery, he said, they would probably have been completed before the flood and the damage caused would have been less than it actually was. “I’ll say that it will be the last job to be mucked up in New Zealand, believe me,” said Mr Semple. A request had been made to him for machinery to complete the control scheme, said the Minister. Machines should have been used on the work before. As it was, obsolete weapons had been used. He had been opposed to the method adopted all along. Instead of being tackled in a comprehensive, scientific way, it had been done by old and slow methods under a system he strongly opposed. He offered to take the control scheme when the strike was on, but that was refused. He had no legal power to take over the work and do it with powerful machinery. Otherwise he would have done so.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1938, Page 7
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232RIVER WORKS Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1938, Page 7
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