WEST COAST PORTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 95, 19 October 1944, Page 6

WEST COAST PORTS

BAD CONDITIONS STILL

Bad weather is still hampering the use of the ports of Greymouth and Westport.

It is repotted from Greymouth that the Port Waikato, with timber for Wellington, has been bar-bound for four days. The Poolta, loading coal and timber for Napier, has not been worked for two days owing to rain and wind. The Kartigi, which was to load coal for Auckland, is still out in the roadstead. Even if she berths, however, it is possible she will not receive the full 2000 tons she would normally carry even if she could get over the bar with it. Supplies from the Liverpool mine are said to be coming forward very slowly.

A Press Association message reports that the Westport bar also is unworkable. The Karepo is in port loaded since last Tuesday week, the Wingatui since last Friday, and the Holmlea and Titoki since Saturday. A Stockton mine official has announced that, starting from today, coal will be railed to Lyttelton as a temporary measure for supplying coal to the North Island.

The "Westport News" in a leading article deals with the port controversy: "All that is being said about making Nelson, Picton, Lake Mahinapua, Milford Sound, or the moon as a harbour for the West Coast is regarded as drawing a red herring across the scent, as. Nature has provided in the Buller River a natural outlet lor the great coal resources of the Buller. When the Massey Government took over control of the Westport Harbour and its great endowment revenues it made solemn pledges to the people that the port would be improved beyond what it had ever been before, pledges which it never fulfilled and pledges which its successors, the Forbes-Coates Ministry and the present Labour Ministry have equally ignored. Now, the whole of the Dominion, the North Island in particular, is paying a heavy price in the severe shortage of coal, and in the continual holding up and shortl'oading of shipping."