DEAR IMPROVEMENTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17957, 8 December 1932, Page 11

DEAR IMPROVEMENTS

UNEMPLOYMENT WORK SCHOOL GROUND WORK An extraordinary example of wasteful unemployment expenditure is disclosed in the case of the Otuhuhu High School playground improvements, which so far have cost nearly £BOIIO to construct, telegraphs a correspondent. it; its estimated that another £2OOO will be required from the Urnemployment Board’s funds to complete the work, making a total of £SOOO, vet local contractors state that they would have been ploased to do the job of £SOO. Luck, -ol? tools and equipment and insufficient supervision are blamed for the expense of the work carried out.

Whereas a private contractor would have completed the job -in a tow months with the use of a. few men amt a couple of ploughs and horsedrawn scoops, the school,committee had to make use of between 25 ami 30 men for 10 months, and 50 men for live months, using picks and shovels and wheelbarrows ■which had lo bo moved 150 yards to be tipped. Mr G. R. Petrie, chairman of the school committee, who was approached, agreed that from a national point of view the new playgrounds were a “monument of extravagance.” He emphatically refuted the suggestion that the school committee was in any way to blame.

“When the work started we had no money, and we still have no money,” lie said. “The entire cost, of the work has been financed by the Unemployment Board in the interests of the unemployed. We did not even have any money to pay the wages of a permanent supervisor, having to make selections from the ranks of the unemployed Ili crimelves.”