The Cement Shortage.

Progress, Volume XV, Issue 10, 1 June 1920, Page 814

The Cement Shortage.

Complaints are still being made about the shortage of cement and numerous buildings are being held up in consequence. In Hamilton a large number of houses cannot be completed because chimneys cannot be built, and a number of other cement houses which have been started have to remain half finished through lack of this material. The shortage is so acute that the Hamilton Borough Council are urging the Government to lift the duty on imported cement to ease the position, while from Invercargill comes the report that the Town Council are asking the Government to start a cement works in Southland to be worked with prison labour. However, the Minister of Labour, Sir William Herries, assured some Auckland builders that cement supplies were coming to hand in a more satisfactory manner. The Wellington City Council recently gave support to the following resolution of the Palmerston North Borough Council:—" That the Government be requested to at once use every endeavour to obtain adequate supplies of cement so urgently required by local bodies throughout New Zealand for the purpose of undertaking the important works which they have now in hand."