HUGE UNDERTAKINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 February 1943, Page 4

HUGE UNDERTAKINGS

COMPLETED OR IN HAND IN AUSTRALIA ALLIED WORKS COUNCIL PROJECTS. USE OF REFUGEES & ENEMY ALIENS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m.) CANBERRA, This Day. The Australian War Cabinet has approved the principle, that all refugees and enemy aliens made available by the manpower authority should be called up immediately by the Allied Works Council. Reviewing the achievements of the Allied Works Council, the Minister for the Interior, Senator Collins, said that in the first' year of its existence the council had placed under construction works valued at £65,000,000. Expenditure had been consistent, at the rate of a million pounds a week. Among the works undertaken by the council were: — For the Navy: Graving docks, oil storage facilities, boom and anti-sub-marine deefnces, stores and barracks. For the Army: Strategic roads, railways and bridges, hospital. For the Munitions and Aircraft Production Departments: Factories in which aircraft <fnd every type of munitions were being manufactured and railways. A network of 5,000 miles of strategic roads, the equivalent of a highway from Melbourne to Tokio had been carved across the continent, and hundreds of aerodromes had been constructed. One project cost £6,000,000 and two others £4,000,000. Today the council has completed 750 major undertakings and has 1,200 more on its bocks, in addition to 5,000 minor projects, each costing less than £5,000. More than 53,000 men work under the control of the council.