PUBLIC WORKS ACTIVITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20986, 24 September 1931, Page 12

PUBLIC WORKS ACTIVITIES.

Sir, —Your recent leader on the Public Works Department expenditures, also letters from correspondents, and the cartoon in your last supplement are vivid expression of the pernicious methods adopted by the Public Works Department for the spending of taxpayers' money, and only conveys in a very incomplete fashion the impression that has been rapidly gaining ground for a long time that the Public Works Department's ways of spending public moneys have become a tremendous drain on the country's resources. There is not a shadow of doubt that if all the works carried out by the department had been allotted by contract, we would be millions of pounds better off, and incidentally it would have lopped off a few thousands of our big army of public officials. tor instance, as soon as the Railway Board was appointed, who was responsible for the feverish haste and anxiety to push on with the Southern railway, resulting in more work being done on that line than ever before in its history ? Also, since the board was instituted, either the chief engineer, or the Minister, must have given instructions for work to be hurried on the East Coast line. In a certain workshop viaduct work was hastened on with feverish activity for a line which those in authority must have known would be banned by the board for any further expenditures at the present time. Hie least that could have been done was to await the decision of the board as to the possible fate of this section of line. One of your correspondents was quite right that £7 000,000 might as well have been thrown into the sea off Mount Victoria. The Railway Department does the same sort of thing. It lias built several tea rooms that must have cost each £3OOO or more with a big staff, and they take nothing Is it any wonder the country is in such a mess ? Anti-waste.