‘Jobs In Jeopardy’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 3

‘Jobs In Jeopardy’

(From Our Parliamentary Reporter)

WELLINGTON, August 6.

If the Government adopted proposals to pipe natural gas from Kapuni to Auckland and Wellington it would mean the closure of three coal mines on the West Coast, Mr P. Blanchfield (Opp., Westland) told Parliament today.

Mr Blanchfield said that when the gas was piped the Liverpool, Strongman and Dobson mines would stop production and 650 men would be unemployed. “The Minister knows the answer—it is to decentralise industry. These men would have to go on relief or move to the big cities,” Mr Blanchfield said. If natural gas from Kapuni

was piped to Wellington, some 40 employees of the Wellington Gas Company might find their jobs in jeopardy, the general manager (Mr M. Kennedy) said today. He said the company would cease manufacturing and become purely a distributing agent. The retort processing staff, about 40 men, would be affected. But he believed that the scale of the company’s operations would increase by such a large extent that most of the affected employees would be reabsorbed in alternative jobs. The company would be faced with a need to convert almost all gas appliances. The only burners not needing conversion were a few new types of “all gas burners.”