CAMPS TO BE ENLARGED

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23054, 24 June 1940, Page 6

CAMPS TO BE ENLARGED

GREATER MILITARY REQUIREMENTS FEWER MEN ON PUBLIC' WORKS The capacity of the three military camps at Burnham, Trentham, and Papakura is to be increased by 50 per cent., according to the Minister for National Service and for Public Works (the Hon R. Semple). He made this statement to “The Press” last evening when discussing the employment of men on public works and dealing with the work for which they would be required. Exact figures of the accommodation of the camps could not be given, but this would be the extent of Ute increase. „ , Mr Semple said that the number of men engaged on public worlcs who were actually on the payroll of the Puonc Works Department was 13,000, a figure which was approximately the same as when he took office as Minister for Public Works after the election of the Labour Government in 1938, He said that the peak figure reached on the public works was 24,000. The present figure of 13,000 was not only no more than the number when he took over the portfolio, but it was lee* than the average for some years before that. 15,000 or 16,000. The figure, however, did not include some 2000 employed by private contractors carrying out public works and some 1500 to 2000 employed under subsidy by local bodies, ' Policy Defended “The increase in the accommodation of the camps will require the use i of the men and macnmery of the Public Works Department,” said Mr Semple. “Some 3500 men have been employed on the military camps up to the present- We could not take off such men because we could not drill and train others to take their place. . . . “There has been a lot of criticism of the number of men on public works made without understanding of the position. The number is now down to 13,000, and we could not have made further reductions without interfering with the vital necessities of the coun- . try. If we had done what some people suggested we would have had no aerodromes or camps or good highways. The speeding up of the work during the last few years has been a blessing in disguise, no, not even in disguise. • Good roads and bridges are valuable in peace-time, and doubly valuable in war-time. I have no apology to offer for any work that has been done since 1935. We treated the criticism with the contempt it deserved, and went on with the job, •. “If we had not had the mechanised equipment for the public works we could not have built aerodromes and trained pilots. Just imagine how we. would have got on with the longhandled banjos with bowyanged pfifcl.osophers at the end of them.”