Attack on work groups angers meeting

Press, 27 January 1987, Page 7

Attack on work groups angers meeting

Some groups involved in contract work schemes met last evening and voted unanimously to support the work of the Labour Department’s group liaison scheme workers.

A spokeswoman for the group, Mrs Patsy Turner, said the meeting expressed horror at the attack on the integrity of the workers and misrepresentation about gang involvement in the schemes.

Representatives from work trusts, church groups, unions, Government departments and motor-cycle clubs attended the meeting.

The police had targeted two contracts in the investigation, one of which was

thought to contain gang members, Mrs Turner said.

The Te Wai Kotahi Trust, which worked on the marae fence, had only one former gang member. It had no machinery and had to do the job by hand, which explained the contract price, she said. “Do the police often indulge in witch-hunts and crusades of this nature designed to further inflame relations between disadvantaged persons and members of the general public?” It had taken the police most of the year to determine what had already been concluded — that there was no criminal activity, Mrs Turner said.