TRUST LANDS TRUST.

Wairarapa Age, 10 March 1934, Page 4

TRUST LANDS TRUST.

INSURANCE ON EARTHQUAKE RISKS. (To the Editor). Sir, —One gathers from the news, columns of your esteemed journal of to-day’s issue, that the Trust Lands Trust property in Masterton received a bad shaking in the recent earthquake, and that their architect’s estimate of the repair bill is in the vicinity of £2,000, excluding the Opera House, which to all intents and purposes, is not worth repairing. Now Mr. Editor, as one of the children of the Masterton Small Farm Settlement Area (for whose benefit this Trust was founded), I presume impertinence to ask why the Trustees failed to protect our property under an earthquake insurance t Surely the warning lesson taught by the Napier shake was sufficient to induce a body of business men to sit up and take notice, and was enough to convince them that they have coquetted with nature until one day they would “get it in the neck.” But no, the same old lackadaisical system that has characterised the Trust for the past five decades, has now, through shortsightedness and negligence of duty on the part of the Trustees, deprived the children of Masterton of the magnificent sum of £2,000 to make good earthquake damage, plus the loss of the Opera House, whilst the said sum of £2,000, repros<ni« ting a dead loss against one year’s income, would, have paid earthquake cover over the whole of the Trust buildings for 20 or 30 years. Unfortunately, it is not the Trustees who suffer, but through, their peculiar anxiety to show a big income and their indifference to protect the capital, the children of this community must pay the piper. It is high time the public of Masterton woke up to the fact that whilst a few paltry pounds cannot be found by the Trust for purchase of school books for Masterton. children, money has now to be found in thousands to replace capital damage that could have been covered under earthquake insurance. Perhaps the present calamity will stir the people of this town to a due sense of their responsibility in the matter. — Yours, etc., PRO BONO PUBLICO.