TIMBER NEEDS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 118, 15 November 1945, Page 9

TIMBER NEEDS

ATTRACTING WORKMEN

Improved amenities for men undertaking forestry work in backblock areas are 4 planned, the idea being to provide good living quarters and establish electrically-equipped villages. Information to that effect was given at the conference of rehabilitation officers sitting in Wellington. It was pointed out that timber was vitally needed, and it was essential not only to have men for timber felling but also to retain them. Forestry work generally was regarded as an excellent avenue to ex-service-men for refitting them to civil Life. Allied with it was congenial work of varying kinds, but the question of living conditions'was important in having the men for the needed stepping up in production. The Forestry Department estimated that it could employ a further 2000 men, including more than 70 disabled men for specialised jobs. Should these men at the end of their five-year term wish to enter some other industry they would be able to do so.

Attention would first be given to preliminary development by way of putting up buildings, constructing roads and fire-breaks, establishing nurseries, tree-growing, the clearing of scrub, and getting forest ready for actual planting. The building programme envisaged 900 cottages for married workers, 200 one-man huts, 40 staff houses, 18 hostels for single men, and 270 other buildings. The bulk of the men would be employed in the Rotorua district. To increase national timber production by another 70,000,000 board feet a year during the next five years, the milling industry would require 2400 more men, including about 670 bushmen and 940 mill hands, it was stated. The method of carrying out such a large-scale recruitment was shortly to be discussed by the Timber Production Advisory Committee.