Glacier road delay attacked

Press, 5 March 1980, Page 12

Glacier road delay attacked

Bureacratic indecision kept tourists from having a look at (the Franz Josef Glacier, said Mr G. Asher, the promotional officer of the South Island Promotion Association. Two Government agencies, the National ■ Roads Board and the National Parks Authority, were squabbling over who should pay for the reconstruction of the road made impassable by the weather before Christmas, Mr Asher said. The Roads Board had set up a sub-committee to see which body — it or the the Parks Authority —- should pay for the reconstruction of the Franz Josef access road and other national parks roads which needed fixing.

’•I wonder if it wasn’t a major tourist attraction in the North Island if it wouldn’t already be fixed,” he said. Only the “young and fit”,were able to see the glacier, and as most overseas American and Japanese tourists were not in this bracket, the. glacier’s power of attracting tourists was dimishing fast:. Mr Asher said that tourism was down by about 18 per cent on the West Coast, largely because of petrol restrictions at week-ends and earless days. “These restrictions have more effeot- on such regions as the West Coast,” he said. “It is certainly getting the wrong end of the stick from the Government.”