NEGLECTED SOUTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27057, 16 April 1949, Page 6

NEGLECTED SOUTH

NO TINNED PINEAPPLE AMPLE SUPPLIES IN NORTH Dunedin wholesale merchants state that while there is ample availability insofar as supplies of tinned pineapple is concerned, and that although they had been informed that every consideration would be given to applications for import licences if availability could be shown their applications have been turned down by the Customs authority. Moreover, they state that merchants in the North Island have been granted permits to bring in ample stocks of this fruit. “It is quite apparent that there is no system whatever in the distribution of licences,” one merchant told the Daily Times. “It appears that the Minister has given instructions that a certain quantity could be imported. Licences for this have been issued to those handiest to Wellington headquarters, irrespective of the requirements of the rest of the Dominion.” It would be pertinent to ask the Minister of Supplies how many licences for tinned pineapple had been issued in Christchurch, and more particularly in the cities of the North Island, he said. Dunedin, as Usual, had to go without. The Australian tinned fruit industry reported a record output during the past season, the' merchant said, and supplies for the New Zealand market from this source were available. The public in the south had been starved for tinned pineapple for years, but so far as the Government was concerned they could continue to go without it. Ample stocks of luxury lines are permitted, into the country, he said, and asked, why not a little tinned fruit for a change?