Tender Let For Chathams Work

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32346, 11 July 1970, Page 14

Tender Let For Chathams Work

Subject to certain conditions, yet to be negotiated, the construction of 24 miles of new roads on the Chatham Islands and the improving of 25 miles of existing roads, will be started by Mr R. Mahan, of Geraldine, in September, said Mr H. G. Royds, consulting engineer to the Chatham Islands County Council, yesterday.

The Chatham Islands County Council, after receiving a deputation of six local contractors (three of them members of the council) who wished to form a company to finance the purchase of $160,000 of new equipment and tender for the contract, voted to let the contract to Mr Mahan. Mr Mahan, a young man, intends to have 10 men working on the contract, and will have all new trucks. He has agreed to have two of the islanders in his party and is negotiating with a third. None of

them are amongst the six who wished to form a company.

Eight contractors visited the .Chathams earlier this year, after Mr Royds had asked the New Zealand Road Contractors’ Association to nominate tenderers.

Of the eight contractors who visited the islands, two put in tenders. One was an Auckland firm. Mr Mahan’s tender, pn a plant hire by hour basis, was the lower by a big margin. Mr Royds said yesterday that the contract had yet to be approved by the National Roads Board, which bad granted a three for one subsidy on the project Mr Royds said that the letting of the contract was known to the council for nine months. Because of the money being made out of the crayfishing, local contractors had not, he assumed, put in a tender. After the slump in crayfishing, the local truck owners and contractors had decided, at a very late stage, that they should tender. The council had decided, by a vote, that it should not accept a late tender.