HEAVY CONTRACT PENALTY.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 44, 11 September 1880, Page 4

HEAVY CONTRACT PENALTY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR.

Sib, — Would you allow me, through your columns, to ask Mr. M. Hunter, Who are the Hawera Road Board ? I am led to ask this by seeing recently specifications for ploughing a road at Whakamara, which threatened the unlucky contractor with a penalty of £5 a day, if he did not complete the job in 30 days from date of acceptance of tender. These specifications were signed by Messrs. G. Gane and O. Williams. Being an advocate for retrenchment, I was led to inquire if the road board was in the habit of thus increasing to ratepayers the cost of contracts let by them (for a contractor must surely charge more for doing work let on the above outrageous conditions than if it was let without them). You can judge of my surprise when I found nothing whatever in the minute book of the board empowering Messrs. Gane and Williams to attach any penalty to the specifications. Evidently, these commissioners do not know who are the Hawera Road Board, and like the three celebrated tailors who headed their petition to the king, " We, the people of England," were thinking, as they formed a part, that they formed the whole. The absurdity of such a high penalty will be seen, when it is remembered that the Government, the other day, let a contract at .£17,000, and only attached a penalty for delay in completing of .£2O a week ; but of course no one dares to think the railway and wharf contract at Carlyle is half so important a work as ploughing a part of the Ingahape road. But, sir, there is another side to this matter, as well as a retrenchment side. It is currently reported at Whakamara that the economical Mr. Gane intended this job for himself and his brother, and so stuck on a penalty to stifle competition from outsiders, Mr. W. Wallace being the acting partner in the concern; Messrs. Gane merely working for him for their own amusement, in the same way as they recently worked on a job on the county road. Of course, Mr. Gane, in his capacity as road commissioner, would take care that no penalty was inflicted on dear Mr. Wallace. I am in a position to say that the above is a. fairly correct statement of the arrangement between Messrs.* Gane and Wallace, having been informed of it by Mr. Wallace himself. If the Hawera Road Board intends to bring discredit on road boards, and, to pave the way for the new county, they could not adopt a better plan than to hand over the control of their business to Messrs. Gane and Williams. The deferred payment money is now administered by those two, although Mr. Williams owns no deferred payment land. I think the public will a,gree with me in saying that these men scorn anything like jobbery or working the oracle. I hope the board will, in future, open all tenders at their ordinary meetings, and not appoint any more of these hole-and-corner committees to do the work. — I am, &c,, Katipo.