MINISTER CRITICISED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 966, 8 May 1930, Page 7

MINISTER CRITICISED

INTERFERENCE WITH HIGHWAYS BOARD COUNTIES MAKE A PROTEST From Our Own Correspondent. HAMILTON, Wednesday. “The Highways Board should be free from political interference, but apparently it is not,’* stated Mr. C. F. E. Barton, Matamata county clerk, speaking at a conference of the Rural Counties’ Association in Hamilton today. The speaker considered the conference should sound a note of warning to counties against the obvious trend of the Ministry of Transport to override the wishes of the Highways Board and the local bodies by reclassifying roads. He said there were many instances where certain roads had been laid down to carry a specified class of traffic, and where the Minister had stepepd in and reclassified the roads in the interests of the owners of heavy vehicles, and in opposition to the wishes of the board and local authority. The trend was for the Minister also to reclassify by-roads, constructed entirely out of county funds, completely ignoring the wishes of the local authoritaies.

Mr. G. A. Stanton (Taumarunui), the chairman, pointed out that at a previous conference the counties had protested at the unfairness of the constitution of the Transport Department. Complaints were made of the inconvenience caused local bodies throughthe delay in classification. Mr. T. Hinton, Waikato county chairman, said the Transport Department had classified a road in his county to carry six tons, against the county’s expressed wish that it should be classified a four-ton road. A Waitomc representative considered the conference should protest strongly at the way the counties had been treated. Mr. Barton claimed that the Minister was taking advantage of an amending clause introduced to remedy a defect in the Act. These regulations gave the Minister power to reclassify roads independent of the Highways Board or the local authorities concerned. It was decided to forward a remit to the next New* Zealand Counties’ Conference urging the deletion of the clause in question.