STRIFE AT HAMILTON.
THE ENGINEER'S STAND.
The following is Mr. H. H. Metcalfe's letter, forwarded to the Hamilton Borough Council, in connection with the deadlock over the waterworks contract: "Your favour of 18th hist., requesting me to pass contract No. 3. I have visited the work, and regret that I am unable to comply with your request. The work is in no sense complete, and the contractor persistently refuses to carry out that which he undertook. Until he does I have no right, even if I felt inclined, to pass the work. Since my last visit, when 1 gave a list of work required to iinish, I find practically nothing done except a deliberate waste of the council's material, which will be charged in due course to the contractor. I am at a loss to understand why pressure should be put on me to accept work which is not up to the mark; I ask nothing more than is specified, and will take nothing less, though I have had an uphill task to obtain it throughout. I notice an attempt on the part of those interested to raise a bogey of litigation. As your own solicitor has already told you, the contractor can bring no case against the council without my certificate; only against myself, which he is quite at liberty to do. Under clause 10 of the conditions, it is your council, and not the engineer, who must act and take the work out of the contractor's hands, and this it can now do at any time, because the contractor has failed to rectify the matters of which I complained, and a list of which I gave i him in writing on April 8. Immediately the council carries out its plain duty to determine the contract I shall be pleased to complete it on your behalf; the present position of a contractor defying responsible authority is absurd. The onus of seeing the work carried out according to contract is on me, and, acting under legal advice, I intend to maintain my position, and will be no party to an attempt to evade the contract.—(Signed) HENRY H. METCALFE."
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Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 102, 30 April 1903, Page 3
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358STRIFE AT HAMILTON. Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 102, 30 April 1903, Page 3
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