TO RETURN TO WORK

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23917, 8 April 1943, Page 4

TO RETURN TO WORK

MINERS AT HIKURANGI AND KAMO (P.A.) WHANGAREI, April 7. , The miners of Hikurangi and Kamo, who have been on strike as a protest against the non-appointment of a doctor to Hikurangi in place of Dr. Armstrong, who has removed to Whangarei, eight miles distant, decided at a meeting this afternoon to resume work to-morrow morning. The Miners’ Council reported that it had received an assurance from the Mines Controller that a doctor is being secured. In the meantime a doctor at a nearby military camp will make his services available if required. It was stated at the meeting that Dr. Armstrong, before leaving, arranged to visit Hikurangi three evenings each week.

His surgery in Whangarei is less than half a mile from Kamo, where the majority of the miners are employed.

The secretary of the Hikurangi branch of the Miners’ Union said at the meeting that Ministers had deprecated the strike, which they declared would be interpreted as the miners’ holding a pistol to the head of the Government.

One speaker urged the miners not to fight their friends, saying that if Conservatives were in power the miners would have had police dispatched against them for ceasing work. The decision to resume is reviewable in three weeks.