PUBLIC WORKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 February 1940, Page 6

PUBLIC WORKS

EFFECT OF WAR. REORGANISATION PLAN. (By Telegraph—Press Asociation.) CHRISTCHURCH, February 7. Made necessary by the heavy drain on manpower through enlistments in the railway construction company and other arms of the Expeditionary Force, a plan for the reorganisation and modification of public works will bo submit- 1 ted to Cabinet by the Minister of Public Work's. Mr Semple, within a few days.

This will provide' for the elimination of works that are considered of secondary importance and for the concentration of men on other jobs that arc now running to a definite time schedule.

The Minister is engaged on a comprehensive survey of the whole of the activities of the department, from the North Cape to the Bluff. He has already visited the West Coast. Canterbury, and portions, of Otago. He will go north this evening. The Minister said that enlistments of engineers and other personnel made the reorganisation imperative. Fifty engineers had enlisted and he had been informed there was a higher percentage of enlistments from public works jobs than from any .other branch of activity being carried on in the Dominion. While the war lasted this was bound to go on. It would not be sound economy to carry on jobs indefinitely with skeleton labour, and men would be shifted to those operations where their services were needed.

Most of the men would also be drafted into other callings made necessary by the war. The Canterbury irrigation scheme was a reproductive undertaking of a type urgently required in New Zealand and already there was a shortage of 200 men on this job. This was one of the undertakings that should be completed as quickly as possible. Key jobs such as tunnelling oh the South island main trunk railway and on all other railway construction work in the Dominion would go on as quickly as possible, but other forms of constructional work- on lines would be slowed down.

The modified programme would probably provide for a continuation of activity on irrigation schemes, land clearing, river erosion, and hydroelectrical development. There would most likely be a big curtailment of roading and bridging and some of the less essential works.