PUBLIC WORKS METHODS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15657, 10 July 1914, Page 8

PUBLIC WORKS METHODS

AGITATORS IN THE SERVICE.

A MEMBER'S ALLEGATIONS.

MINISTER OFFERS INQUIRY.

[BY TELEGRAPH.— CORRESPONDENT]

Wellington, Thursday. "There is a ec»«w loose somewhere," declared Mr. C. X. Wilson (Taumarunui), in speaking in the House this evening on tho matter of carrying out public works. He went on to make some allegations of a serious nature. Although provision was made for road works, he said, they wore not properly carried out by certain overseers. "Although money is voted," he continued, "and its expenditure authorised, there are men who were appointed to tho Public Service by the late Government whose one object— am speaking of the underlings to bring discredit on the present Government." There are men who are entrusted with the expenditure of public money in the back blocks who decry the Government on every possible occasion and who deliberately falsify the position and mis-state facts. Such men are in the habit of saying, 'We cannot get any authority to spend this money,' in cases which they have had the authorities for weeks and weeks. 1 say that there are paid agitators in tho Public Service who are doing their best to do injury to the present Government. I know of one man who was dismissed by an engineer. A member of Parliament 'interfered and insisted upon the man being reinstated. That is the type of man who is doing all that is possible to injure the present Government."

.Mr. Wilson declared that there were men in the Public Service who were nothing less than paid spies, men who were paid to spy on the Government and to give information to the Opposition. He was not speaking of the engineers, but if some of the overseers. He also stated that these men were wilfully "fooling" with the co-operative labourers by telling them that they did not know what "they were going to get for their work when they had the information in their possession.

The Minister for Public Works, the Hon. W. Fraser, said that if Mr. Wilson would formulate specific charges, giving the names of the men concerned, and the localities and the works upon which they were engaged, ho would have a searching inquiry made into them. (Hear, hear.) If what Mr. Wilson had stated was proved to oe correct, Mr. Fraser added, he would see that it would not occur again. He stated that a complaint had been made to uim ill writing by a certain man stating that he had been refused work by a ganger, out when he had had an inquiry made By a competent officer, who met- the man in company with tho ganger, the man had denied writing the letter, and had stated that the whole thing was a fabrication.