LINER HELD UP

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21924, 19 January 1946, Page 5

LINER HELD UP

FIREMEN’S DISPUTE PASSENGERS FOR N.Z. WAITING FOR SETTLEMENT (9 a.m.) SYDNEY, Jan. 18. Nearly 600 passengers for New Zealand who have been stranded in Sydney for some time may be further delayed by the tactics of an extremist element in the Communist-controlled Seamen’s Union. The Katoomba should have sailed at noon but by the middle of the afternoon no crew had been signed on and her departure was indefinite. The passengers waited on the wharf in stifling humidity and are still waiting in the rain. Some of the passengers booked have been wating for six months. The Katoomba may be delayed indefinitely if the stokehold crew, at a meeting early this morning, decide not to man the vessel. Last evening the passengers were accommodated on the ship whose departure for Wellington had been fixed tentatively for 11 a.m. The vessel, which is under charter to the Commonwealth Government, was taken off a troopship run to return to New Zealand as many as possible of the 2000 people who are stranded in Sydney. Under an agreement between the Seamen’s Union and the Maritime Industry Commission three men fewer are carried in the crew on the transTasman run than on the run to the tropics. It is stated that union officials have made no serious attempt to ensure that the vessel is manned. Most non-Communist members of the crew are willing to take the liner to sea, but they have been overruled by an extremist element in the union. •