THE New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1897. THE KAITOKE ACCIDENT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1316, 20 May 1897, Page 20

THE New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. THURSDAY, MAY 20, 1897. THE KAITOKE ACCIDENT.

In another column will be found the result of the deliberations of the railway officials;, together with the decision of the General Manager, Mr T. Ronayne, and the Hon A. J. Cadman, Minister of Railways, in the Kaitoke accident enquiry. Pursuant to the usual practice, the evidence taken has been treated as strictly " departmental," and cannot therefore be made public, but we submit that the time I has arrived when these enquiries should be treated in exactly the same manner as those into maritime casualties. Enough, has been made known, however, to enable the public to judge of the enormity of the offences committed by the men engaged on the maintenance of the permanent way. It would appear that these are in the habit of "taking the risk," and there is every reason for the enforcement of the most rigid regulations in future over every line in the colony. The regulations do not appear to have been respected in any way. Taking all the circumstances into7consideration, no sympathy whatever can be felt for thoso who have been punished by dismissal. Most people will regard it as a mild form of retributive justice, for if men fail to realise how much depends upon their watchfulness and care, where the lives of hundreds of fellow creatures are concerned, they deserve not only deprivation of their position as einployoes, but a further and more serious punishment. The Kaitoke case is certainly the worst' in railway annals in this colony, and the uneasy feeling that will be created by the knowledge that utter disregard for the lives of the travelling publio has for so long marked the acts of railway workmen will not be soon allayed.