Roading priorities

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32539, 24 February 1971, Page 14

Roading priorities

Residents of the Kaihu district were justifiably indignant over the refusal of the National Roads Board to meet them to hear their pleas for the improvement of State Highway 12, which runs from Dargaville through the Waipoua State Forest Neither the Minister of Works (Mr Allen) nor board members should have had to be told about the condition of the road—or of its value as a tourist highway. In the event after residents had waylaid Mr Allen’s car and made their protest he gave an assurance that the board would meet them at an early date.

Why the road has never been properly formed and sealed is something of a departmental mystery.Complaints of its inadequacy are not new. Its condition must have been known to officers of Mr Alien’s department who would also know that its major function must increasingly be the opening to tourists and New Zealand visitors of a forest area containing some of the noblest trees in the world—truly one of this country’s show places. No doubt a meeting between residents and members of the Roads Board is a necessary formality; but it would have been appropriate had the Minister been able to give the roadside deputation an undertaking that a sealed road would be built as quickly as possible. It should have been given a high priority long ago.