DEFENCE NEEDS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 44, 21 February 1942, Page 8

DEFENCE NEEDS

BUILDING OF CAMPS DIVERSION OP LABOUR (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Friday. "We need all the manpower available for the next few weeks to meet the requirements of the Defence Department for buildings and defence work generally." said the Minister of Public Works. Mr. Armstrong, to-day. The Minister said he was E leased to say that various local odies during a visit he had just completed to Oamaru, Timaru, Ashburton and Dunedin, while making representations to have urgent work of their own done, had not pressed hard in the matter because they realised the position. "To-night I shall be attending a meeting of the Builders' Association," Mr. Armstrong added, "and shall have a talk to them in regard to getting on with the job of constructing new camps as rapidly as possible. To do that we will have to utilise the labour of men now engaged on house building. Builders themselves, as far as is reasonably possible, will have the work allocated among them. Both skilled and unskilled labour will have to be diverted to defence for some weeks to come. I The job is there to be done and we have to get ahead with it."

State housing work here would also have to ease off temporarily or possibly come to a standstill even. It was either co-operation or competition for the labour available. There was not enough for all the work.