HAAST PASS ROAD

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27279, 20 February 1954, Page 8

HAAST PASS ROAD

SUBSTANTIAL GRANTS SOUGHT DEPUTATION TO WAIT ON GOVERNMENT A deputation from the South Island Local Bodies’ Association will urge on the Government that a substantial grant be made available for the immediate construction of the HaastHaast river and Haast-Paringa sections of the Haast Pass road. This was decided at a meeting of the executive committee of the association yesterday. Mr J. Sullivan (Fox Glacier) said that three years ago the Prime Minister (Mr Holland) had given representatives of South Island provinces an assurance that the road would go through. The people of Westland were now becoming slightly perturbed at the policy of the Government. It seemed to be concentrating on the section of the road up the Haast valley. That work was good in itself, though he would like to see it progressing faster, but they would not like to see that section completed while the 38 miles between Haast and Paringa was uncompleted. They djd not want Westland cut off from South Westland. “I would suggest that this, matter is so important that a deputation should wait on the Prime Minister with a view to getting the Paringa-Haast section started,” he said. The deputation which will discuss this and other matters in Wellington will consist of Messrs D. H. Cockburn (president of the association); J. C. McKenzie (Southland counties), B. Chittock (Otago counties), W. S. Crotty (Canterbury counties), M. Wallace, J. A. Harley (Mayor of Nelson), and R. M. Macfarlane, M.P. (Mayor of Christa church) or his deputy. It will ask that a fair proportion of £10.744,000 set aside in the capital works programme for land settlement and development be allocated to the South Island, and that special attention be given to the development of land in the Buller and Westland areas.