LOSS TO SOVIET

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21449, 24 March 1933, Page 9

LOSS TO SOVIET

NEGLECTED MACHINERY

RUSTING IN OPEN A|R

AMAZING REVELATIONS

TANTAMOUNT TO WRECKING

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received March 23, 8.15 p.m.)

Times Cable

LONDON. March 23

The Riga correspondent of the Times says the Commissariat of Heavy Industry continues to record negligence tantamount to wrecking in connection with the transport of valuable imported machinery.

For example, 140 tons of machinery found at Odessa had been left for more than two months in the open air and was rusting. Under the weight of one machine a quay collapsed affer a few weeks and the machine disappeared in the Black Sea. The newspaper Pravda records the discovery of a consignment of machinery which was lost in Georgia for two years though it is still clearly addressed to Perm. How it arrived in Georgia nobody knows. The paper says it wonders whether anybody cares. A firm engaged in the Ural copper industry has just discovered some imported machinery, valued originally at between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 gold roubles, some of which has lain in the open since 1927. It has been serving as a convenient source for anybody requiring spare nuts, bolts or other parts. The remnants are now a heap of rusty metal, partly buried in sand. The Commissariat says the estimated value is a mere conjecture because it is impossible to recognise some of the machines.