HOUSING NEXT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 39, 16 February 1943, Page 4

HOUSING NEXT

DEFENCE WORK PLANT AND MEN

GREAT WORK REVIEWED

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, This Day. Plans were in hand for the diversion of plant, labour, and materials into other phases of State works as the major defence programme in the Dominion was tapered off, stated the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Semple), in an interview, He said that in the next few weeks, earth-moving equipment at present engaged in defence works would be. available for roading and draining in connection with housing projects.

In the House of Commons recently the Minister of Labour (Mr. Bevin) said it was anticipated that the progress with defence works in Britain would now permit the resumption, on modified lines, of housing construction, said Mr. Semple. Similar plans had been completed in New Zealand. The men who planned the buildings and engineering services for the defencel programme were being diverted into other governmental activities, such as housing. Mr. Semple said he had made an inspection, with Mr. James Fletcher, Commissioner of Defence Construction, and Mr. F. S. Dyson, District Engineer of the Public Works Department of major defence works recently completed in the Auckland district. Almost the whole of the available labour was engaged in buildings for troops from overseas, and the works included not only hospitals and accommodation but stores and magazines. The construction of buildings outside New Zealand was also in hand. Some idea of the magnitude of the work was given by the fact that yards for the assembly of materials before shipment overseas covered 25 acres each in Auckland, Wellington, and Lyttelton. Valuable experience had been gained in the construction of buildings, and this would result in considerable economies in the post-war programme which the Government had to undertake. Store buildings had absorbed enormous quantities of timber and materials. Some of those buildings would have only a few years of life for the purpose for which they had been erected. REDUCTION IN COSTS. Since the first store was erected there had been a reduction in costs—in the case of later buildings by over 50 per cen t.—and within the next few weeks experimental types of buildings would be erected which should be still less costly. Those were the result of careful planning by men experienced in major projects. The orderly way defence works had been carried out demonstrated that New Zealand could produce men capable of handling major projects. Mr. Semple said he was sorry the public of the Dominion had not the same facilities as himself to see the extent of the work carried out in the defence construction programme. It would be an eye-opener if that were possible. Illustrating the celerity with which the work was done, he said that a hospital now being built, with a capacity of 1000 beds, would be completed in the next month or six weeks, and it had only been commenced twelve weeks ago. Part of the building was now occupied by patients. When the full story of the defence programme and other war activities of the Dominion was told it would be found to be outstanding among the Allied Nations.