Cars From Overseas Not Yet Sterilised

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31543, 4 December 1967, Page 14

Cars From Overseas Not Yet Sterilised

(New Zealand Trete Auodatton) WELLINGTON, December 3. The apparent failure of agriculture and health authorities to take any action to sterilise cars from the liner Ceramic before they were towed on to a public road at Wellington has alarmed waterside workers, according to the secretary of the Wellington Amalgamated Waterside Workers’ Union (Mr J. Hoy). i

The cars were lifted straight off the liner and towed around Aotea Quay to be parked on a road about 100 yards south of the Memorial Gates, he said.

“We understood the cars were to be discharged from the vessel straight into a transporter, and taken to where they could be treated, before being placed on the roads,” Mr Hoy said. “Instead, eight cars and a caravan were unloaded on to the wharf on their own wheels and towed right

around the quay, where they are now parked for the weekend. “With all the hue-and-cry about the dangers of foot-and-mouth disease, the authorities, if they are as genuinely concerned as they make out, should do something about this.”

A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said the area in which the vehicles were parked was classified as a quarantine area, and as soon as they were moved on Monday it would be disinfected.