COAL INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Daily Times, 26 June 1936, Page 3

COAL INDUSTRY

PROPOSED REORGANISATION. INVERCARGILL, Thursday. The reorganisation of the Dominion’s coal industry and an improvement in the conditions of mine workers, were forecasted by the Minister of Mines, the Hon. P. C. Webb, in reply to deputations at Ohai to-day. “If ever there was a time when the coal industry had to be organised up to the last point of efficiency to meet the competition of oil and electricity, that time is now,” the' Minister said. “The industry should be rationalised, ”v he continued. “Complete rationalisation, in our judgment, embodies nationalisation, and if there is one commodity which should be nationalised that commodity is coal.” The policy of the Government would be to conserve every ton of coal for to-day and to-morrow. Nobody should have the right to half work a mine and then allow it to run out. In the future they would not. Oil would in all probability be used to run the railways of the near future, and it was then that this oil would be extracted from the Dominion’s coal. Tne Minister added that in 'the legislation which he intended to bring down, provision would be made for the mental and physical well-being of the miners. Their recreational hours should be brightened, and it was his intention to see that everything possible was done to give the miners suitable playing areas with up-to-date facilities. —(P.A.)