LOCAL AND GENERAL

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4564, 3 November 1937, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

The annual King Country School Sports will be held on the Domain at Te Kuiti next Saturday.

Calls at New Zealand and Australia will be substituted for the prearranged calls at Chinese and Japanese ports by the Cunard White-Star luxury liner Franconia, which starts the first world cruise of 45,000 miles from Southampton on December 24.

"It is amazing to think that the Government Departments are the only large businesses in this country which have a compulsory superannuation scheme," said Mr. A. E. Manning, when speaking at the annual reunion of the Waikato and King Country section of the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Employees' Association in Hamilton on Saturday evening. "In many of the large businesses to-day a man can leave with nothing after a lifetime association with his firm. I know the whole Dominion will welcome a national superannuation scheme, and I am sure the Government will carry its intentions in this connection into effect," he added.

The sealing of the Ohaupo-Te Awamutu section of the Great South State Highway was completed on Saturday last and, with the exception of a small length either side of the Mangapjko bridge now in course of construction there is a sealed or concrete road right from Te Awamutu to Auckland. Work on the Mangapiko bridge is to be accelerated in the hope that it will be possible to finish the job by Christmas though that is somewhat problematical. The men also sealed a small portion of the State highway within the Borough on the Te Awamutu-Kihikihi road near the stables. To-day they are engaged sealing and patching small portions of the Kihikihi road. Several months later when the road had finally consolidated the final sealing will be applied from Ohaupo to Kihikihi.

"The Prime Minister said the cost of Government would not be increased," said Mr. W. J. Broadfoot, M.P., during a debate in the House of Representatives on Friday afternoon, "but I haVe a list of increases and they are somewhat alarming. Public works maintenance costs, for instance, have gone up by more than £2,000,000." The Minister of Mines, the Hon. P. C. Webb: How much of that was spent in your electorate? "When I returned to my electorate recently I saw evidence of the most extravagant and unwarranted expenditure of public money," Mr. Broadfoot said. "About £120,000 was spent on the main highway, while people in the backblocks still have no metal on their roads."