NEGLECTED LYTTELTON.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1579, 6 March 1919, Page 6

NEGLECTED LYTTELTON.

A very important question was raised at the meeting of the Harbour Board yesterday regarding the neglect of Lytleltori as a port of call for British and American cargo steamers. For the past four years Auckland and Wellington have been the great receiving and distributing centres of the Dominion. Vast quantities of South Island cargo have been dumped down in these ports to await

transhipment to Lyttelton, TimaruJ Dunedin, and Invercargill. Had the Union Company's coastal service been equal to the demands made upon it, the inconvenience to South Island merchants would have been minimised, and there would have been little loss apart from the inevitable breakages from an extra handling; but unfortunately the Union Company has had to hand over so many of its steamers to the Government that the coastal tonnage has proved quite inadequate to cope with the cargo offering. As a result southern merchants are put to great loss and delay through their inability to get their goods out of Wellington and Auckland, and these ports are now so congested that it is becoming quite a problem how they are to be relieved. In the Wellington sheds to-day there is an accumulation of goods, not only for all South Island ports, but for Australia as well. At the end of last week thousands of cases of glass were stacked round the wharves awaiting transhipment to other parts of the Dominion, and there appeared to be no prospect of getting them away within a reasonable time. Unless the Chambers of Commerce and the Government bestir themselves the position will get worse, because there are a number of large steamers on their way to the Dominion, to say nothing of the enormous accumulation of New Zealand cargo in Sydney which has been awaiting transhipment for months. It seems to us that there should be a prompt and emphatic demand for a return of those Union Company vessels still doing Government work, and a strong request that oversea vessels with cargo for Lyttelton and Dunedin shall visit these ports, instead of dropping everything in Wellington and Auckland.