Money Squandered By Harbour Boards

Northern Advocate, 11 May 1939, Page 4

Money Squandered By Harbour Boards

SCATHING CRITICISM

[Special to “Northern Advocate ”]

GREYMOUTH, Wednesday,

Mr D. C. Milne, at the monthly meeting of the harbour board, criticised harbour engineering methods in the Dominion, Mr Milne will leave New Zealand next week for England, where he will supervise the building of a new £40,000 combined dredge and tug for the board, at the completion of which he intends to resign after nearly eight years’ service. “I have seen every port in the Dominion,” Mr Milne said, “and I am simply astounded at the magnificent manner in which public money has been scattered broadcast in schemes which no experienced harbour engineer would seriously entertain. The trouble is that in New Zealand it is, still believed that engineers are jacks of all trades, endowed with such colossal mental capacity that they are able to design and build harbours, bridges, roads, railways, hydro-electric and irrigation schemes—widely divergent jobs—and do all equally efficiently. This delusion already has cost this country many hundreds of thousands of pounds, and is likely to cost many more until and unless there is a radical alteration in this view taken by engineers.”