MANY DIFFICULTIES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 296, 14 December 1931, Page 4

MANY DIFFICULTIES.

Mr H. H. Sterling Reviews N.Z. Railways. CHANGES TO BE MADE. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, December 14. New Zealand’s railways must operate along business lines and changes must must be effected,

but in effecting these changes the Railway Board will bear in mind the interests of the staff. Declarations on these points were made by Mr H. 11. Sterling, late General Manager of Railways, at a farewell which was tendered him by the Wellington Branch of the Railway . Officers’ Institute

on Saturday night. He said that the railways had a great tradition, but it was difficult now to live up to it. Everybody wanted something from the railways. Many people wanted something to be carried for nothing. His reply was that it simply could not be done. If someone got service for which he did not pay, then someone else had to pay for it, and that elementary truth was apt to be forgotten. Sympathetic to Staff. Replying to remarks made earlier .in the evening by the president of the New Zealand Railway Officers’ Institute, Mr V. J. R. Stanley, Mr Sterling said he did not think for a moment that the Railways Board wanted to be arbitrary to the men who constituted the railway service. There were certain business practices in universal application that were not applied in the railway service. THfe Board was entirely sympathetic towards the staff, and it had come into the business in something of the same way as a board of directors would come in. The board, he thought, had been a little misunderstood, largely due to an unfortunate development for which no one was to blame. Great Difficulties to Face.

The railways were still facing very great difficulties, Mr Sterling went on. Perhaps the greatest was the system under which they operated. The questions that required consideration to-day were far different from those which had arisen in the past, and possibly the biggest question of all was whether the organisation today was adequate. Present conditions were unsatisfactory and uneconomic. They could not possibly be permanent. The sooner the necessary changes were made the better it would be for the country. Undoubtedly the first change would have to be an internal one, to bring stabilisation to the industry and everyone in it, but from a wider aspect, considering the transport industry as a whole, it was apparent that many conflicting forces were involved, and he thought some judicial machinery would have to be set up to deal with them in something the same way as legal disputes were dealt with and settled. Rationalisation of Transport. That something was provided in the Transport Act passed during last session of Parliament, and while he did not think that the Act was by any means perfect, at least it set up the machinery to enable a start to be made in the rationalisation of the transport industry. It was not bolstering up the railways. It placed definite responsibilities on the railways to provide a service that would be second to none, no matter what interests were opposed to it. That was what the railways had to measure up to, and Mr Sterling said he was sure they would measure up to it. Speaking of the economies effected in the railways, Mr Sterling said that last year the expenditure had been decreased by nearly half a million, and this year he thought it would decrease by a little over a million.