PUBLIC WORKS METHODS

Otago Witness, Issue 3148, 15 July 1914, Page 32

PUBLIC WORKS METHODS

CHARGES AGAINST OVERSEERS. / (From Ouh Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, July 9. ,l There is a screw loose somewhere,” declared Mr Wilson in speaking this evening on the method of carrying out public works. Ho then went on to make some allegations of a serious nature. Mr Wilson said that although provision was made for road works they were not properly carried out by certain overseers. “ Although money is voted,” he said. “ and its expenditure authorised, there are men who were appointed to the public service by the late Government whoso only object—l am speaking of the underlings —is to bring discredit on the present Government. There are men who are entrusted with the expenditure of public money in the back-blocks, and who decry the Government on every possible occasion, and who deliberately falsify the position and misstate facts. Such men are in the habit of saying Wo cannot get any authority to spend this money ’ in oases in which they had had the authority for weeks and weeks. I say that there are paid agitators in the 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.” As an instance of what he had spoken of, Mr Wilson mentioned a case which he said had come under his notice the other day. In this case he heard the statement ‘‘no authority,” although the authority had been issued several months before. Instead of the road overseer doing the work for which the grant was made, the bulk of the money was wasted in a most shocking manner, and at the same time the man told the settlers that he could not get the authority. Ho declared that there were men in the public service who were nothing lees than paid spies—men who were paid to spy on the Government and to give informal ion to the Opposition. Ho was not speaking of the engineers, but of the overseers. He also stated that these men were wilfully “ fooling ” with the co-opera-tive 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 of Public Works (the Hon. W. Fraser) said that if Mr Wilson would formulate specific charges, giving the iair.es of the men concerned and the work upon Which they were engaged, he would have a searching inquiry made into them.—(“Hear, hear.”) If what Mr Wilson had stated was proved to be correct he (Mr Fraser) would see that it would not occur again. He added that ho had had a complaint made to him in writing by a certain man stating that he had been refused work by a ganger, but when ho had had an inquiry made by a competent officer who met the man in company with the ganger the man had denied writing the letter, and had stated that the whole thing was a fabrication.