RAID SHELTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 43, 20 February 1942, Page 7

RAID SHELTERS

MORE MEN TODAY

COUNCIL AND STATE WORK

At noon today the number of men working on the preliminaries for the construction of public shelters was 107, consisting of 92 labourers, eight carpenters, and seven tunnellers. The number will grow steadily, and will be increased greatly wlien certain non-essen-tial construction works are closed down to free men for essential

shelter construction.

Tunnellers have begun driving into the sides of the Hobson ■ Street Gully. Certain plant is available from the City Council drainage tunnel job, but much more will be needed, arad compressors and other plant are being obtained from various parts of the country. Shelters in accordance with the Public Works specifications are being constructed in the reserve at the corner of Wakefield Street and Jervois Quay, and excavation and trench work is going ahead in Kent Terrace, at the Carillon, and other places. SHELTER FOR STATE EMPLOYEES. Work on a large scale has been commenced in Parliamentary Building grounds for the protection of employees and the public. . Large-scale work is-' being done ajt the back of the Waterloo Hotel, on the. site of the proposed new Government Printing Office. This work was started on January 30 and is very well ahead. It will give shelter for about 1000, but it will not be available -for. the public, as the whole of its protection will be needed for men and women from the Service offices and from the Customs building. Mr. W. McAra, of the Building Trades Federation, said that the debate about men coming forward could now be dropped for good, for they were coming forward, and more and more would come, if the plans were ready and the work was there for them to do. The scale of the plans as they were today was far too small, he said. It meant that by the middle of March shelter could be given for 3000 or 4000 people. What the men wanted, and what the public expected, was a programme which would give shelter for 40,000 by. the middle of March.

He stated that the advisory committee was receiving inquiries from men who offered to do part-time work after their usijal day's work, and the committee was investigating the best ways of using such man-power.