PUBLIC WORKS POLICY.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1933, Page 4

PUBLIC WORKS POLICY.

The announcement that the Government may soon have to consider a change of public works policy, under which more men would have to be employed on road work in the backblocks, is under the circumstances only what one would expect. Indeed it is difficult to see how the Government could come to any other conclusion, for proper reading of the back country is easily the most important, most urgent and most comprehensive public work in New Zealand to-day. Many years will pass and much money be spent before the work of backblocks reading is complete, and the sooner an organised national endeavour on a large scale is commenced with this object in view, the better. Most of the first-class land in New Zealand, particularly the level areas, is already fairly well roaded, even if the roads do not in all cases conform to motor highway standard, but there are large tracts of second-class land, usually of a hilly and perhaps rather precipitous nature, which can be successfully farmed if the settlers are provided with all-weather access by road. Taranaki affords a typical example. The older-settled portion of the province around Mount Egmont is now fairly well served with means of intercommunication, but there are many districts, especially in the Ohura, where formation and metalling of roads is only in its infancy. The completion of the OkauOhura highway is a work of first importance on which attention should consistently be applied until the work is finished, and there are several other arterial routes in the same category. The metalling of the Tangarakau Gorge road, the Whangamomona-Raetihi road, and at Mateu to provide communication with Kiore, New Plymouth and Whangamomona, are cases in point. Not only are they routes between important centres of population with a community of interest, but they will also give settlers reasonable egress from and access to their properties. It Is to be hoped that the Government will make up its mind quickly and apply its energies vigorously to the conquest of the most pressing public works requirement of the day.