TRAINEES PROPOSED AS RURAL HOUSE BUILDERS

Grey River Argus, 24 March 1947, Page 8

TRAINEES PROPOSED AS RURAL HOUSE BUILDERS

A suggestions that rehabilitation building trainees, at an advanced stage of their training, should be sent out in groups to engage in rural housing construction and thus speed up the settlement of ex-servicemen on the land, was made at a meeting of the Rehabilitation Council by Mr W. Clarke (Dunedin). “I feel that, mainly through the rural housing position, there is not as much being done in the way of land settlement as should be done,” said Mr Clarke. “We have now reached the stage when the first batch of our building trainees art practically through their training. Could we not take them in sections, say eight men and one instructor in each group, and send them into the country to do a job there. It would hasten/and settlement to a great extent.”

Mr Clarke pointed out that the sooner sections were settled the sooner they would be brought into production. Surely the country was entitled to building supplies as well as the cities, and supplies should be obtained for the groups to work with. He suggested three groups as a basis. Regarding rehabilitation generally he felt that no better job could be done.

Mr T. R. Lees (Palmerston North) thought they should increase the number of trainees who could build bouses in the cities rather than reduce them. The number of men engaged in building houses in the towns was appallingly small, as was also the number of houses being built. In Manawatu only 92 houses had been built in 12 months and there were 600 men awaiting State rental homes. There were only 45 rehabilitation building trainees in the district. To cut them down by sending them to the country in teams would still further adversely affect the position. Mr H. G. Dickie (Rotorua) said they were rapidly getting to the position where there were more carpenters than materials. Meanwhile on the land they were hampered because of a housing bottleneck. Housing was the main hold-up in land settlement and he felt the suggestion made by Mr Clarke was worth considering.

Mr S. W. Gaspar, board member in charge of trade training, said the board would be happy to make a proportion of trainees available for rural housing. The difficulty was in arranging with the department concerned to organise materials and subcontractors. The board had already assisted in a similar way with Maori housing, and he felt that the same could be done for rural housing. The Director of Rehabilitation, Mr F. Baker, said the board knew only too well the difficulties as regards rural housing, but up till now it had not been able to come to a satisfactory arrangement regarding subcontractors whose hands were always full. It was useless carrying on with the carpentry work on rural houses unless arrangements could be made to have the houses completed and occupied.