IMPORTANT STATEMENT

Marlborough Express, Volume LIV, Issue 165, 15 July 1920, Page 4

IMPORTANT STATEMENT

HYDRO-ELECTRIC AND RAILWAY POLICY.

[FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT.]

WELLINGTON, July 15. The Minister for Works made an important statement on the hydroetectrical and railway policy to a deputation of Canterbury * member-,. He had decided to ,create a special Hydro-Electric* Department of the 'Public Works Department to construct headworks and power-houses, leaving the electrical engineering section and i-etfculation to a spor-ial electrical department. This policy had been started at "Mlinsahao, and would be continued with the develooiient of Coleridge and all other schemes. The sale of power must be considered as a purely business proposition. He was trying to sot out the objectives, which would be reached in. one or two or three years^ and to give the public a definite idea of ivhat would be done and1 the staff what to go for. The Government, he said, recognised that hydro-eleq-tncity was No. 1 on the list. There were only 1600 men on public works to-day, and as the demand for labor was general he doubted if increased wages would make much, improvement. The Government, in its railway construction policy, would have to decide, as it was impossible to table them all, whether it would cut out something and spend all the money to open up coalfields and open up farming lands, or, as a' third alternative, to connect up the existing hues. •