Under this vote there is an amount of £23,000 for advertisements in newspapers. I should just like to ask the Minister whether he will not for his own information get a return from the Department of the daily papers, weekly papers, bi-weekly papers, and monthly papers, in which the Government advertises. I do not think the Minister will be able to get that information at once and give it to us, but I ask him, for his own satisfaction, to investigate the distribution of advertisements. As far as I can ascertain the newspaper advertisements are not divided equally, and if he studies the list I think he will agree with what I said here. I do not want to say anything more in connection with this matter, except to direct the Minister’s attention to it with the comment that my impression is that those advertisements are not fairly distributed. This £23,000 paid out for newspaper advertisements is a large sum and I think we should see to it that the advertisements are fairly and reasonably divided no matter to which Party the newspapers and periodicals belong. Then I should like to ask the Minister a question in connection with the paper problem. I hope he will make a statement to the House about how we stand in connection with paper. Can the newspapers and periodicals have reasonable expectations of improvement in the near future; if the war ends, has the Government an opportunity of acquiring paper, where, and in what quantities? The Minister is conscious of the fact that the newspapers and periodicals which were in existence before the war went through a very difficult time owing to the decrease in their paper supplies. But since the war other newspapers and periodicals came into existence, which justified their existence because it was evident that the public likes to read them. It is especially for those publications that I want to plead this morning, at least as regards some of them. I want to ask whether, with the present paper supply, more consideration cannot be given to some of those newspapers and periodicals. I do not want to belittle the necessity of supplying newspapers and periodicals which existed before the war, but the impression one has is that some newspapers and periodicals which came into existence during the war and have a right to exist are not being treated fairly. I wish to mention two. The first is a publication read by this side and also by members on the other side, and which is also eagerly read by the public. It is “Die Kruithoring”. The fact that both sides of the House peruse this publication must convince the Minister that it justifies its existence; but now we find that the paper shortage has the result that the circulation of “Die Kruithoring” is so small that half the demand cannot be supplied. I want to plead for it when we are dealing with a publication like this which the public wants to read, even though it came into existence only during the war, the authorities should help such a paper. The public would like to read it but cannot obtain it because the circulation is not large enough to supply the demand. I hope that the Minister will devote his attention to it. There is another important paper I want to mention. It is perhaps the youngest publication of all, but one which is eagerly read by the public, and I hope that the Minister also reads it regularly. It is the “New Era”.

It is the Minister of Lands who is so afraid of “Die Kruithoring”.

Why do you waste so much paper in regard to “Die Kruithoring” by putting it in our boxes, because we do not want it.

If the hon. member has to take medicine he had better take it without complaint.

But you waste paper by putting it in the boxes.

If the hon. member is as badly informed in connection with this matter as in connection with other matters about which he speaks in the House, we need take no notice of what he says. I should like to tell the Minister that the “New Era” receives the quantity of paper which enables it to print a number of copies which by far does not supply the demand in Johannesburg. It is sold out as soon as it gets into the streets in Johannesburg, and the difficulty now is that the people who wish to read the paper because they wish to read about the policy of the Nationalist Party in English, are not able to obtain it. The Government must not allow its judgment to be affected by the politics supported by the publication. I want to tell the Minister this, that I have no reason for thinking that an injustice is being done for political reasons. I wish to say that I don’t think that politics plays any part in the matter, and for that reason I am free to plead here. If it had been a S.A.P. paper which was as popular I would also have said it.

Why do you not plead for “Eendrag”?

Where is it printed?

In Johannesburg.

Evidently it is really not a well-known paper. But seeing that there is such a demand for the “New Era” which publishes the policy of the Nationalist Party in English, we hope that the Minister will investigate the position to see whether this paper cannot be met. The circulation is such that it cannot supply half the demand in the Johannesburg streets. I have mentioned these two important newspapers, which came into existence during the war. Perhaps there may be others. I ask him for enough paper in any case to make available these papers.

I want to inform the hon. member and other hon. members that the question of paper control is under my colleague, the Minister of Economic Development. Col. Kruger happens to be chairman of the committee that the Director of Supplies has appointed in connection with the allocation, and I have a certain amount of knowledge of their difficulties. The journals the hon. member refers to are not the only ones that have complained about the shortage of paper; others have done the same. The position is serious and Col. Kruger has left for overseas to ascertain what can be done not only to get extra plant and to replace plant in the Government Printing works, but also to deal with the very important matter of newsprint. I understood from him last week there was a slight increase, I think 15 per cent., for these small newspapers, but your committee treats all these applications similarly; there is no preference or priority.

Not all of them are getting the 15 per cent.

That is as I understand the position. I have no hesitation in giving you the assurance that all these matters are dealt with fairly and squarely by the committee.

What are the chances of getting more paper?

It depends on the success of Col. Kruger and those with him on his visit to Great Britain and the United States. The Director of Supplies realises the importance of the position, and Col. Kruger left last week to see what can be done to increase supplies. In reference to the other matter mentioned by the hon. member, I was under the impression that the advertisements were distributed as evenly as possible between the daily and weekly papers.

May we have an insight into it?

Nothing can be done during the Session. It will take some time, and I will let the hon. member have the information. There is nothing to hide in connection with this matter. I have dealt with the other point the hon. member raised in regard to the future position. I hope this mission will be successful, and if it is we shall get back to normal.

Have they left?.

Yes, at least Col. Kruger has left.

With regard to what the Minister has just said, that Col. Kruger went overseas to purchase machinery and paper, may I draw his attention to the fact that recently a special machine a very expensive machine, was acquired for the Government Printer in Pretoria. I speak subject to correction, but I think that that machine cost approximately £70,000. It is used for the printing and the binding of the telephone directory of Pretoria and the Transvaal. But the machine did not do what it ought to have done. It did not bind the book, with the result that that directory falls to pieces. Owing to the scarcity of paper and the high cost of printing in connection with such a directory, which is by far the largest in South Africa, it cannot be reprinted and rebound. I think the Minister ought to give us the assurance that when such machines are acquired in future at an enormous price, they will be thoroughly tested to see whether they fulfil the requirements for which they were imported. In the second place I should like to ask the Minister what the intention of the Government Printer is in connection with this directory which is falling to pieces. It is becoming impossible for business people. The directory is so dilapidated that many of these people had it rebound themselves. I should like to have information from the Minister.

Last Tuesday I put a question on the Order Paper in connection with the printing of the Government. Unfortunately the Minister has not been able to give me a reply. What I should like to ask the Minister is this. Apart from the work performed by the Government Printer the Minister of course knows that other printing work is also done for the State, and I should like to know from him which companies do that printing, and whether tenders have been asked for that printing. As far as I am acquainted with the matter we could not discover whether tenders have ever been asked for that printing, and I should like the Minister to inform us what companies, apart from the Government Printer, do printing for the Government.

I am surprised at the remarks of the hon. member for Gezina (Dr. Swanepoel), because I was present at and inaugurated the operation of this special machine that was imported for the purpose of enabling the telephone book to be printed to fall flat when opened up so there would be no difficulty once it is bound, in seeing the numbers. I have had no complaints on the lines indicated by the hon. member, but I shall certainly investigate. The hon. member for Mossel Bay (Dr. Van Nierop) asked a question yesterday; I have not been able to get the information yet but I do know this, tenders were urgently called for and in Cape Town the Cape Times got the tender, and the tender has been extended for the duration of the war. Further information is being obtained for him and he will probably have his answer on Tuesday.

I do not know how far I shall be in order but one feels that there are various matters which are very essential. I am for example thinking of our telephone books. It is becoming an impossible matter. It is said that the shortage of paper is the reason, but repeatedly we find that there are new subscribers whose names are not in the telephone directory. I just mention that in passing. Then there is for example the annual report of the Department of Railways, and other publications. One sits on a Select Committee and one is told that there is no copy of the report of the Department available for one, that there are only 10 or 15 copies and that members cannot obtain it. One is told that it is due to the shortage of paper or lack of the necessary personnel. I should like to know from the Minister in what measure we can expect a return to normal conditions, and obtain proper telephone directories and departmental reports.

I cannot predict at the moment what will take place. The printing works at the moment are working at full pressure and certain reports are not being published, but I hope the date will not be far distant when we will get back to normal. The printing trade, like others, are short of staff.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote No. 25.— “Public Works”, £1,870,000.

I want to raise a few matters with regard to building control in South Africa, but before I come to that, there are a few general remarks I would like to make. The general public is finding it more and more difficult today, with the high prices of building to build themselves suitable houses to live in. I am referring more to the people in the lower income groups. Let us take people earning from £400 to £800 per annum. Before, a man earning that income would probably build himself a house costing in the neighbourhood of £800 to £1,200. I think it was generally considered that a man should spend two or three years income, but not more, oh a house he is building for himself. That seems reasonable.

Mr. Chairman, might I have the privilege of speaking for half an hour? Thank you. The position is that these people are finding it more and more difficult to build suitable houses. I think it is reasonable to say that a person should build a house which takes two to two and a half or a maximum of three years’ salary, but not more. As the result of various factors building today throughout the world, but especially in South Africa, I think, has increased tremendously in cost. The increase in cost is to a large extent due to the increased cost of material. Wood has become very expensive now. Bricks have not increased so much. Cement has remained practically at the former price. Roofing has gone up and various fittings have increased largely in price. It may be that after the war the cost of this material will be less than it is at present, but I think that I am on fairly safe ground when I say that the cost of building material will never come down to what it was before the war.

You are quite right there.

We had the same experience after the last war. It was almost amazing to see large, well built houses which were put up in 1912 to 1914 and to realise the small sum of money those houses cost. There was a large increase of building material and also of wages in the war, and subsequent to the war there was a decrease in the price of building, but it never came anywhere near what it was before the last war. I think I am safe in saying that the same thing will take place after this war. The difficulties will be very great and the cost is going to remain well above the price applying pre-war. If you take a man in the £400 to £800 income group, as I said, he could build a house for £800 to £1,200. What has he got to pay for that house today? Surely twice as much. £2,000 to £2,500. If a man earning £400 to £800 has to spend the income of four or five years on the roof over his head, things are wrong. The result is that if matters are not improved, if things are not done to bring down the cost of building in the country, the State is going to be shouldered eventually with the building of practically all the houses for the lower income groups, perhaps not directly, perhaps through utility companies or municipalities, but eventually it will come down on the State, because the cost of building will be so high that the small man cannot build a house, for himself, and the State will have to build it. Now, in principle I do not like that. It breaks down a man’s independence. I think it should be the ambition of every man, of no matter what income group, to have a house of his own, and pay for it with his own earnings. I find that there is nothing, in regard to people who live in slum areas and people in the lower income groups, which better rehabilitates them than to take them out of the slum areas and put them in decent surroundings. It has a very great psychological effect, but that effect is very much greater when the man occupies his own house. Now, we will have the position that the lower income groups cannot supply their own houses, and the State will have to do so, unless the price of building comes down. Another reason for the increase in building costs is undoubtedly the tremendously high wages which will have to be paid to artisans. The difference between the wages paid to a skilled artisan and an unskilled workman in this country is probably more than it is in any part of the world. What is the result? The wages of skilled artisans have been pushed up by successful efforts on the part of these artisans to form a closed circle for themselves into which you can only get with the greatest difficulty. They are trying to keep people out of that closed shop and by doing that they have decreased the market and have driven wages up. But, I am afraid that the position will be that the skilled artisan is going to drive the cost of building up so high where he will create the position of defeating his own ends, and buildings will be put up much more than before without the help of your trained artisan, and we will use other building materials. One will probably be able to do without a mason or a carpenter in the building of houses. We shall probably have to get down to certain types of standardised houses where one gets all the different materials in standardised lengths, and buildings can be put up without the use of skilled artisans, or by making very little use of them. I believe that has been done in Vereeniging in connection with the Van der Byl works.

Yes, standardised, but not prefabricated.

My point is that it is cutting out the use of the skilled artisan. The skilled artisan is defeating his own purposes because he is forcing people to do without him. Now, what I want to suggest is this, that the Minister and his Department should appoint a commission of members of his Department and consisting also of one or two of the best building contractors in the country, with a few architects, a few quantity surveyors, anyone who is an authority on the subject, and that this commission go into the whole question of what methods can be employed to keep down the cost of building in South Africa. It might be done by standardised building; it might be done by standardised parts of buildings; it might be done by using different material from what we use at present; it might be done by using other mechanical devices in building, but something should be done to bring down the cost of building. We have to do it. It is the duty of this House and of the Government to see that something is done to put the man in the lower income group in a position where he can again build a house for himself without having to spend the income of five years on his own roof. The best thing to do is to have an authoritative commission appointed by the Minister, comprised of experts, to see what can be done. It is not for me to say what can be done. I am not an expert. All I know is that prices are going up and that in nearly every case where prices go up in industry new methods and materials are used and prices controlled to a certain extent. If the Minister appoints such a commission he would be doing a very great service indeed to South Africa and to the lower income groups who are finding great difficulty in obtaining houses.

What about rates of interest?

They must go into the whole question. Now, I wish to pass a few remarks about the building controllers. If one believes only half one hears about them it is bad enough, but before going further I would like to ask the Minister whether he has gone any further with regard to the matter raised by the hon. member for Durban (North) (the Rev. Miles-Cadman) who made some accusations against the building controllers some time ago, when the Minister promised that he would investigate the matter and that in due course, after the investigation was completed, he would inform us of the result of thè investigation. I think it is now some months since that telegram was handed to the Minister and by that time he ought to know what the position is. Now, the ways of the building controller are very queer indeed. They are unfathomable to the ordinary person. They do things which are practically unbelievable. I want to quote only a few of those things which they have done to show how unfathomable their methods are. I think what we want in the Minister’s department is a thorough overhauling of the whole system of granting permits, and the whole machinery of this Department. When I say we want to overhaul all this, I think there are quite a number of controllers in South Africa who have despotic powers and are not under any control. It seems to me we shall have to appoint a controller to control the controllers in order to put matters right. Let me give a few examples. The Maize Control Board has a building in Pretoria which is much too small for them. Their typists have to work underground in the basement. The garages at the back are used for storerooms and as offices. The building is completely inadequate and the typists work under unhygienic conditions. The Maize Control Board therefore went to the controller to ask permission to extend their building by adding to it. That was continually refused. Afterwards they were given the following information, that a certain person whose name I need not mention now, but will give to the Minister, had received a permit to build a large building opposite, with offices to let. He was building it as a speculation. He got a permit to build as a speculation and the Maize Control Board were informed that when this speculator’s building was finished they could hire offices in this building belonging to this man who had been granted a permit to build for speculative purposes. I think that the Maize Control Board would have had to pay £400 a month as rent.

We must have his name.

His name is Katzenellenbogen. Now, that is not doing the right thing. It seems to me that those people do not find time to do their work. But let me bring one matter to the notice of the Minister, with regard to a permit for a building which was applied for by an educational institution in the Western Province. The Minister knows about it because when we went to him he was immediately instrumental in having that permit granted. He knows the conditions of the case and knows that this was a building required very urgently to house apparatus and machinery belonging to a higher education institution in South Africa. This stuff was being left outside to rust because there was nowhere to put it. It was very urgent, and the building required was not big and did not use much material as it was to be constructed mainly of concrete. On the 12th September last the application was handed to the building controller for a permit. By 30th November they had received no reply from the controller whatever, not even an acknowledgment of their application. On 30th November the institution wrote to the building controller pointing out that they had made application on 12th September and no notice had been taken of it. By 12th February, 1945, they had still received no reply, not even an acknowledgment of receipt of the previous letters. In six months after the application, notwithstanding the fact that they had again written to the building controller, they had not even received an acknowledgment of the application. I will say this for the Minister that as soon as I brought it to his notice he was immediately instrumental in having that permit granted. I am not criticising him here but the Department, which lets six months go by without even considering this application or taking any notice of it whatever and without acknowledging receipt of letters. If things like that take place in any Department, it must be in a great muddle. Now, I think there are probably few members of this House who have not had difficulty with the building controller. Often essential alterations are required to be made to a house, and the permit is granted or not granted. Even building permits which we consider essential are applied for in vain. Sometimes after a long time the applications are granted and sometimes they are not. But it is a queer thing that there is one town in South Africa which has no difficulty whatever in obtaining permits, no difficulty whatever, and that place is Hermanus. A friend of mine applied a little while ago for a permit to build a house at Hermanus, and it was granted immediately. This person has built a house in Stellenbosch a few years ago, but the permit for a house at Hermanus was granted immediately.

When did your friend apply for this house in Hermanus? Did he build it eight months ago?

No. The Minister replied to a question by the hon. member for Mossel Bay (Dr. Van Nierop) and from that reply it appeared that 99 or 100 permits were granted in Hermanus to build houses in 1943 and up to the first three months of 1945, That is, in 27 months 100 permits were granted in Hermanus to build houses.

These are seaside holiday houses?

Yes. But who are the people who build houses there? Are they people who live there permanently? The majority of people who build in Hermanus are these playboys from Cape Town, the idle rich, whose one great ambition it is to have a showplace at Hermanus where they can take their friends for a much extended week-end. These people have no difficulty in putting up most majestic houses at Hermanus costing £2,000 and £3,000, one after the other. I doubt if there is another place two or three times the size of Hermanus in which 100 permits were granted in 27 months. The building which goes on in Hermanus is not providing roofs to give refuge to people who have not a roof over their heads. It is putting roofs over people who have not even got heads. There is a tremendous shortage of houses. Every day one reads in the papers about the shortage and the difficulty people have in obtaining a roof over their heads. We know that thousands of our military forces are returning to the country. We have to find houses for them. Many of them have married since joining the forces and started families. They want homes. There is hardly any room in Cape Town or the larger towns of South Africa today for the people who are here already, so what is the position going to be when the soldiers come back? It will be aggravated enormously. And what does the building controller do? He does not allow buildings to be put up for these people, but he allows the playboys of Cape Town to put up fancy residences at Hermanus. That is the attitude which the building controller is taking up with regard to the serious question of the shortage of housing in. South Africa. I consider that this is nothing else but a scandal. The Minister acknowledged in the reply to the question that quite a number of these people, as far as he knows, were people who lived in Cape Town. With regard to the others, he did not know. They may live in Cape Town or somewhere else, but that does not matter. No, at Hermanus they could get their palaces. I consider this is nothing else but a scandal. I go to Hermanus regularly. For the last two or three years I have been noticing how buildings are put up. And quite a number of these buildings were not put up according to the permits granted.

I wish you would tell me about that.

You said so yourself in your reply. You said it in reply to that question. The hon. Minister has forgotten. I must remind the Minister of this. He may plead now that he does not know anything about this. He may plead ignorance or innocence, but I must remind him that even if innocence is bliss it is still better to be wise. He knows that quite a number of these people live in Cape Town. That was the reply to the question. They put up these houses not, as hé himself knows, to live there, but as pleasure resorts. With regard to a large number of others, no trouble was evidently taken to discover whether they required that house or had any other house to live in, because the Minister pleads innocence or ignorance as to the conditions of the people to whom permits were granted. But the mere fact that insufficient enquiry was made as to whether the applicants for permits at Hermanus had houses in which they were living at present, there is the lack or orderliness, if I may call it that, and at any rate, a lack of devotion to duty on the part of the controllers. I consider it is the duty of the controller, in these times when there is such great difficulty in building houses, to find out in such cases whether the applicant has a house in which he is living and very definitely to find out what that house at Hermanus will be used for. In any case I think that in times like these, your seaside resorts are not places to which building certificates should be granted indiscriminately, and it seems to me that as far as Hermanus is concerned these permits were granted indiscriminately. I say that I feel—and when I say I feel it, I am in good company, in company of the vast majority of people all over South Africa who know anything about it at all—that the Department of Building Control needs a complete overhaul.

Hear, hear.

I feel, although I would suggest that building permits were granted improperly, that they were given in a loose manner and given to people who did not require them at all, and that they were withheld from people who definitely required these buildings and in whose case it was in the general interest that they should be granted. Here again I think we need a thorough overhaul and the sooner it occurs the better.

I feel that I should intervene at this early stage to give hon. members, and particularly the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) some information regarding building control, and then I will deal with the specific points raised by him in connection with the matter. In July, 1942, it was decided to establish building control because of the extravagant class of building being erected at Hermanus and on the South Coast of Natal and elsewhere. People had money and they were spending it lavishly on houses. There was a shortage of building material and I was appointed as building controller because we had to control the railways, P.W.D., the Provincial Administration, mupicipalities and public utility companies, as well as the general public. Now, the first thing I did as building controller was to bring into existence the Building Control Council consisting of representatives of all sections interested and dealing with building pronositions, the railways, the Provinces, the P.W.D., the controllers handling building material, the municipalities, utility companies master builders, the trades unions the architects and the timber merchants. That Council is responsible for the policy adopted in connection with building control. I do not wish to say for one minute that the Council is responsible for the administration of building control but the policy of building control was laid down by the Council. Then we discovered if we were to get into touch with all classes and sections of the community various sub-committees should be appointed. The first was the one that contains the Railways, the Provincial Administrations and the Public Works Department. Then we had a sub-committee appointed to deal with all applications by municipalities and public utility companies; Dr. Hamblin, City Engineer of Johannesburg is the chairman of that. The Director General of Supplies has also permitted dealing with industrial propositions. The various principal towns, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein and Durban, biave all got building committees.

Are they secret committees?

No, they are not secret committees; and on those committees there are representatives of the master builders, trades unionists, architects and quantity surveyors — all people interested in this. That is the situation and no permit is ever granted unless it has first been approved by one or other of these committees. It then goes to the central controller in Johannesburg, where they take cognisance of the building material position, and we work in the closest co-operation with the controllers of these various materials such as electric material, timber and steel, and a permit is then granted. In some cases people have had to wait six, eight and ten months. The two worst cases in South Africa are Johannesburg and Pretoria, particularly Pretoria, where people have had to wait from eight to ten months, and that is due primarily to the labour position. Every fortnight I have supplied to me by the Labour Department the labour position in South Africa.

Their controller is just as bad.

Yet there are 300 builders unemployed in Johannesburg at the moment.

Did that committee authorise those racing stables in Johannesburg?

Yes, I will deal with that. The return for the 19th April shows that there are 196 of these people unemployed in South Africa; at Port Elizabeth there are 104 and at Cape Town 85, of which 64 are painters. The hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) has made great play with regard to the granting of permits at Hermanus, and on the face of it he seemed to have a good case; but what are the facts? During 1943 and the first half of 1944 we had from 700 to 1,000 artisans out of employment in Cape Town, and as far as building control was concerned in this area of Cape Town, as it is today in Port Elizabeth, we granted any permits that were applied for.

Did you grant every permit applied for in Cape Town during that period?

Yes, up to April or May 1944. At that critical period I went out of my way—it was in the middle of 1943—to tell the Broadcasting Corporation who were very anxious to build a new studio in Cape Town at a cost of about £300,000, to get on with their plans, because we could then have been enabled to give them a permit, and this would at the same time have relieved the unemployment position in Cape Town. They dilly-dallied, and they were ready in April, 1944. But by that time the cement position had become critical because a quarter of our cement output in South Africa was being sent to the East in connection with the war effort, and that hampered the granting of the permit to the Broadcasting Corporation. I want to point out that at that period we were prepared to issue permits for all classes and conditions of things. If people had applied, and the local committee was authorised accordingly. At Port Elizabeth the same thing prevails. The people want to deal with the unemployment. I am not going to say what the Controller of Manpower should do and whether these people could have been shifted from one place to another, but that is the position so far as building control is concerned. We have isued 37.000 permits since building control came into existence, totalling over £63 000,000. Mistakes have occurred and mistakes will occur, and I am prepared to face up to some of the mistakes that have been referred to. The hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Barlow) has referred to the racing stables, and somebody else referred to a garage. I answered those questions in the House and dealt fully with the position of both of them in Another Place. Take the racing stables. That came before the local committee in Johannesburg, and the application for a permit was turned down, but the report sent to the Building Controller said the application was approved.

Who marked it in that way?

The responsible official marked it as approved, and the man in charge issued a permit.

Is that man any longer in your employment?

When it came to Col. Holgate’s notice, he tackled the whole Committee and they said they never granted a permit. I had an enquiry instituted. The Under-Secretary for Labour was appointed by the Minister of Labour as a commissioner to go into all the circumstances in connection with the issue of that permit — because I agree with the criticism that that permit should never have been granted.

Which one?

The permit for the racing stables.

Is that another one?

This refers to the racing stables. It is the case in connection with which there was an answer to in this House, the £7,000 one. The Committee’s report was that it was a mistake on the part of the Chairman. An application had been sent in and it was marked “Refused” and this application which was granted should have been refused. He said it was a clerical error.

Why was the work not stopped?

You cannot stop the work once the permit has been issued; you have to honour the permit.

That is a very thin reply.

Are you sure about that?

Yes.

I know of one case where it was stopped.

I can cite cases where they granted the permit for buying material and they subsequently withdrew it.

We do not issue the permits for buying materials. The permits we issue is to enable them to build. We do not withdraw the permit for building material.

Who deals with that?

The Director-General of Supplies.

Why did you not stop them putting their horses into the stables?

How can you possibly act in the manner suggested when these people have a clean permit?

It was not clean.

No, it was not clean, it was a mucky permit.

What did you do with the man who made the mistake?

He is no longer chairman, we changed the chairman.

Is he still a member of the board?

No.

Is he connected with you at all?.

No.

What happened to him?

I think he is in Cape Town at present.

Is he in the Government service?

Yes.

That is what we want to know.

The other question was the question of the garage. That was granted by the local committee without hesitation, in Johannesburg, on the recommendation of the National Transportation Board. Those are the two cases where the applications should not have been granted. The question of building control has many ramifications. You have the master builder, you have the man who wants to build for himself, and you have the speculative builder.

What is a speculative builder?

A speculative builder is a man who builds for the purpose of re-sale at a profit.

And what is a master builder?

The master builder is generally employed by people who build for themselves; that is the distinction.

How much profit does he make?

We do not control his profit. He gives a price to put up a building. The Building Council lays down certain standards. One was that no building should exceed 2 000 square ft. unless it happened to be a doctor or a minister, and they were allowed an extra 500 ft. for a surgery or an extra room.

Can they go as high as they like?

They are allowed up to 2,150 square ft. for a double storey.

Can they go up as high as they like?

No, they cannot do that with an ordinary building. We also agreed, in order to relieve the question of housing, to permit blocks of flats — originally they went three storeys and no more — to go up to eight or nine storéys. But this is a stipulation that is made. If a person wants to erect a block of shops, only one-sixth of the space can be used as shops and five-sixths of the building must be available for occupation.

As offices?

No, for occupation.

For residential occupation?

Yes, for residential occupation. But in Johannesburg and Pretoria there has been such a dearth of offices that they have had to allow blocks of offices to be erected. We gave permission the other day for the erection of a block of offices in order to enable returned soldiers, who are professional men, to get this office accommodation. But let me come back to the speculative builder. A great deal of criticism has been levelled against building control because we have granted permits to speculative builders and allowed them to build houses when other people were waiting to build houses for themselves. They have always had a proportion available, but owing to the arrangements that have been made now with the Demobilisation Committee, people are building for the order of the Demobilisation Committee. Those houses are available for returned soldiers. When it became evident six or seven months ago that we were going to have difficulty and trouble in connection with housing for returned soldiers, the Building Controller took the stand that any returned soldier who wanted a house for his personal occupation, no matter what the state of the list might be, he was to be placed right up at the head, and permits were granted accordingly. We soon discovered we had to retrace our steps, because people were actually trading with the returned soldiers.

Shame.

It is a shame, and today the returned soldier gets his priority. He can get a permit if he wants to build, but that permit must be granted as a result of the recommendation of the Demobilisation Committee. They enquire into his circumstances. It is ridiculous and absurd for a man earning £20, £25 or £30 a month to want to build a house costing £4,000. The Demobilisation Committee go into all the circumstances and they recommend accordingly. Any returned soldier who wants to build a house and who can get that recommendation is automatically granted a permit. Now let me come to the specific points referred to by the hon. member for Humansdorp. I do not know the case about the Mealie Control Board. I shall have to investigate. But as the hon. member knows and as other hon. members know, members have" approached me and the general public have approached me in connection with this matter, and we will see what can be done in order to get satisfaction. The position is a very difficult one. The position is critical. Nothing would please me better ….

If the position is so critical, why not let Countess Labia give up her five houses at Muizenberg?

All I am concerned with is the question of having houses built.

Why allow the houses to be closed and nobody to live in them?

Is building material scarce?

Yes.

Then why have you already granted fifteen permits this year at Hermanus?

The position is this. I made a statement two or three months ago that we would be able to withdraw building control so far as properties are concerned and merely deal with the question of bricks. We immediately had repercussions from Canada, where they thought it was about time to curtail our timber supplies. I also wanted to increase the amount for alterations from £100 to £400, but I was confronted with the position in Canada. There they had allowed alterations up to 1,500 dollars, £300, and they have reduced it to 500 dollars or £100. Under these circumstances we have still to keep a firm hand on the position. There are certain things in very short supply. Electrical material, baths, glass, locks, and things of that description are in very short supply. We are trying to augment these supplies locally, and we have been successful to a very considerable extent with regard to the baths, and the locks, though not equal ta the imported locks are being manufactured in this country. In regard to galvanised iron and asbestos, our people are producing all they possibly can in this connection.

What has it to do with. Canada if we use purely local bricks and cement?

Canada is concerned with the export of timber.

What does it matter to them our using our own bricks and cement?

If you built houses without timber Canada would not be concerned, but timber is required for houses. In the first six months of complete control in 1942 we only issued permits to the value of £3,000,000. People were not building. There was a shortage of everything. The military were going full steam ahead; they were building extensively; and we were right in the middle of the war. I made appeals to the municipalities and others to get on with housing, and we had an experimental house built in Johannesburg, an individual house. Various classes of material were uséd in its manufacture as a substitute for timber. But South Africa is a very conservative country. None of these substitutes have since been used. The only people who could use them were the municipalities, and they were reluctant to avail themselves of them.

What was the cost?

The estimated cost was £1,600 but it actually cost considerably more than £2000. That, however, is not a fair figure; the estimate was £1,600.

What is the use of that? The ordinary builder would build a house of that sort for £800.

The hon. member for Humansdorp referred to the position so far as the building is concerned. What he has told us here is perfectly correct. The cost of building has gone up 60 per cent. or 70 per cent., and although it may drop slightly it is certainly not going back to the pre-war price. I have had a committee appointed comprised of the Secretary for Public Works, the Price Controller and a representative of the trades union, for the purpose of ascertaining and giving us the reasons why these prices had increased. The result of their investigations was that they disclosed labour had gone up 40 per cent. and the price of material had gone up 40 per cent.; and on top of that there was the contractor’s profits. But in actual practice the returns seem to indicate that the increase is between 60 per cent. and 70 per cent. I agree with the hon. member that the finest thing that could possibly happen to a man is for him to own his own house. I do not want to anticipate what the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation, who is dealing with housing, is going to say: that is outside the scope of my jurisdiction. I share the hon. member’s sentiments; that is what we would like. He has made a suggestion that a commission should be appointed to see how we can reduce the costs. There are many ways in which the costs can be reduced if you want to take drastic action in connection with this matter. But we are up against the opinion of prominent architects and municipal engineers that the old method is just as cheap and the building certainly more lasting, and in this regard it might be interesting to quote to hon. members a statement that was made by Mr. Simon in his work “Rebuilding Britain—A Twenty Year Plan.” Mr. Simon was head of the United States Federal Housing Authority. I think we can accept that a man occupying that position would know something of what he is talking about. This is what he says in regard to pre-fabricated houses and substitute methods—

Only a week ago Great Britain imported thousands of pre-fabricated houses.

I am quoting to you ….

I am quoting to you, the “Cape Times”, it is never wrong.

This man ought to know what he is speaking about and his views are shared to a considerable extent by professional opinion in South Africa. A house was built by Dr. van der Bijl in Johannesburg, a concrete house. In that house no skilled labour was used ….

How many rooms?

There are three rooms. The house was built for £240. There were two bedrooms, a little kitchen and a bathroom. The municipalities of Cape Town and Durban are building similar accomodation for their people. It is about half the normal price.

It shows what can be done.

Yes, it does.

You have quoted Mr. Simon to show it cannot be done, but now by this you are destroying your argument.

This is not a pre-fabricated house.

I do not care how it is fabricated, whether it is “pre-” or “anti-” so long as the building is there.

That tyne of house can be supplied if the local authorities would undertake to do it, but up to the present they have not done so.

If you saw it you would not want it either.

Well, there you have it. The hon. member has probably built more houses than the whole lot of us put together. That is the view of the master builder. We have got to house our people in South Africa, and efforts are being made in that direction. For the information of hon. members I may say that Building Control anticipates that they will be able to build £35,000,000 worth of buildings in the current financial year.

How many houses will that represent?

Divided by 3,000 will give you the correct figure.

The Government and the committee over which I preside have reduced Government requirements to £4,000,000, which represents 11 per cent. of the total. The Government, the Railways and the Provincial Administrations would really like 40 per cent. of it.

It looks as if a big railway station is being provided from that money.

The municipalities and public utilities will get £2,000,000 under this….

Is that housing?

No. This excludes housing. It is only Government work, railway stations, post offices and things of that description; and so far as municipalities and public utilities are concerned it also excludes housing, it is for stormwater drains and works of that description.

How many houses?

If you will only let me try to give the information it will save time. These interruptions make it very difficult indeed—

Hit him hard.

I do not want to hit anybody. I am going to give all the information, it is information that hon. members are entitled to get. It is all interesting information. Let me state, in order to short circuit the position, of this £35,000,000, 64 per cent. is for housing in one way and another; national housing £4,000.000; urban housing £11,000,000; rural £1.000,000; Government houses £1,000 000; industrial houses £1.000,000; native housing £250,000, and flats £3 millions. That is all in connection with housing information in one form or another—64 per cent. Last year it represented 65 per cent. That is what we have always had in mind.

What is the total amount?

64 per cent. of £34,000,000, I think £22½ millions. Then we have the Industrial Development Corporation, extension of factories etc., 7 per cent.; gold mining has been limited to £650.000, though they could do with £4,000,000 or £5,000,000; agriculture is quarter-of-a-million, and there is quarter-of-a-million for commercial offices. There is £1,000,000 for shops, unless they are connected with flats only; hotels, nil.

And bioscopes?

Bioscopes, nil. The Education Departments of the provinces, and private schools, £375,000; hospitals £375,000, churches £250,000—£20,000 a month. Then to make up the amount to the total there is Defence with about £1¾ millions. That will indicate to hon. members the difficulties that we have. Every one of those categories I have mentioned could be trebled. Take the churches. It will surprise hon. members to learn that there have been applications for nearly £1,000,000 to be spent on churches—or rather £500,000. The applications in respect of bioscopes represent £li millions; these have not been looked at. As far as hotels are concerned, hon. members can imagine what that position is.

Is there not a bioscope to be built at Kimberley?

No, that was a building that was converted with second-hand material.

Did you approve of that?

Yes, it was approved; second-hand material was used in that building. The hon. member referred to the question raised by the hon. member for Durban (North) (Rev. Miles-Cadman) in regard to a telegram he read in this House. I tried to intervene when that debate was on but unfortunately it was a private member’s day and the debate ended at 4.10 p.m., so I was unable to take the opportunity to reply. But I immediately issued a statement to the press that the fullest enquiry would take place, and next day the hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) and myself saw the Minister of Justice, and he gave instructions to the Secretary for Justice to instruct the Attorney-General to take action. As far as I am concerned the matter is in the hands of the Attorney-General for Transvaal. As to what progress has been made, I have no information. That telegram was sent by an organisation called the Society of Practising Architects. Now, it is a very funny thing that that organisation only came into existence on 15th February, 1945, and through investigations I made I found that four of its members were convicted by magistrates for breaking building control regulations. When the telegram was received I was in telephonic conversation with the Central Council of the Institute of South African Architects, and they said that they dissociated themselves from that body. Let me read a letter I received from them—

What has that got to do with it? We want to know whether it is true or not.

What about the charge?

The Attorney-General is acting on it. I reacted to it straight away. I informed the press. The hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) knows that I was rightly anxious that action should be taken. He was present and I sent him a letter which he could send to the Society of Practising Architects.

It was interesting to hear the Minister giving us all these figures, but there is one aspect of the matter I want to deal with definitely, and that is that the public of South Africa has no confidence in building control. There must be a reason for that and the Minister must appreciate, although I do not wish to criticise him, that that Department is giving us much trouble and the public has lost confidence in its completely. I want to know the reason. That is why I agree with the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) that it is about time that we know what the position is. It may be that they do not disclose for their actions the reasons but from my experiencee I am inclined to think that the sooner the matter is put into the hands of the Minister who is already much overworked, the Minister of Demobilisation, the sooner the returned soldiers will have confidence in it. According to the Minister’s own statement here, that is probably typical of the reason for this lack of confidence in the controllers which we have all over the country. In Vereeniging the housing question is not only a problem but a scandal. We cannot get permits to build houses for our people. We are asked to develop in order to absorb returned soldiers. We get letters from the Minister of Demobilisation about it but we cannot get permits. It takes months. Will the Minister explain to us why the controller gives permits for fancy houses at Hermanus while in places like Vereeniging and elsewhere we cannot get them to house people? Is that the way to deal with the problem of the shortage of houses? Why is there a Controller of Labour? Labour today is strictly conscripted. If houses are required for urban purposes artisans can easily be transferred from Cape Town to an area where they are required more urgently than those building houses at Hermanus. They seem to have artisans here, but in other places we are looking for artisans and I can hardly credit that the building controller sanctions permits for pleasure houses in Hermanus. That alone leads me to say that I have no confidence in the controllers. The controllers have to allocate material and all this material going to Hermanus would probably have provided homes for hundreds of peope. That condemns the controller. I have here another incident to show the Minister why I cannot rely on the controller. There are various committees. To what extent he comes into consultation with them I do not know, but I have one incident where months after I was told that the applicant could not get the material because the Director of War Supplies had to sanction it. I applied to the Director and it was sanctioned within a few days. Why? For months this applicant could not get material. I want to relate the case to the Minister. It is a case where two brothers went to the front. They were next to each other when one was killed and the other wounded and taken prisoner, but, because he was wounded he was released from the prison camp in Italy and came back. His nerves were badly shattered and he could only do individual jobs. He applied for a building permit to put up a dry-cleaning business, but the building controller said he could not get the machinery. What has the building controller to do with machinery? In fact there was machinery available. He refused it on that ground. Later he said he could not get it because of the shortage of building material. At the same time there were dozens of houses going up in Vereeniging.

I thought you said there were no houses going up.

Yes, but very inadequately. We need hundreds there. The point is that this applicant saw these houses going up every day. It was the question of material for one dwelling house, which could have been sacrificed in favour of this soldier. I have numbers of newspaper cuttings to the effect that all the time a returned soldier is told that he will get preferencee. What preference do they get? They do not believe it any more. The sooner the building controller is put under the Demobilisation Department the better. Although this matter was continually put up to the controller, he refused to accede to it. After months the matter was put to the Director of Supplies and acceded to it immediately.

He refused it until he was satisfied.

Why did he not tell us that the Director had to deal with it, then we would have gone to him much sooner, but the applicant was kept in the dark for months until from another source he obtained the information that the permission of the Director-General of War Supplies had to be obtained. I say that building control as it exists has failed the country miserably. I want to bring that to the notice of the Minister because we cannot go on like that. I advise him to do something about it. If he gets into a position where it is impossible to fulfil the demands of the country, let the building controller say so publicly from time to time, but then he must not give the reason that there is lack of material in one instance, and on the other hand allow houses to go up at Hermanus. That creates distrust amongst the public. I think the Minister must clear this matter completely, or cancel it and let it go into the control of the Minister of Demobilisation, particularly as far as returned soldiers are concerned.

I omitted to reply to the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) on the question of the commission and the hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood) also raised the question. I make an offer to any hon. member like the hon. member for Vereeniging— it may be more difficult for the hon. member for Humansdorp because he is in Cape Town—to investigate for themselves what happens in connection with these matters and see that their complaints are not as serious as they want to make out. Our trouble in connection with building control is that we have four applications for one permit.

Is that why they could not answer three letters in six months?

The hon. member for Humansdorp is right, but the building control organisation had a very difficult time with regard to its staff. When we established building control I managed to secure the services of six or seven good architects in Johannesburg, but by the end of 1942, when the tide turned, these people went off and we had to take others in their place. People came in as architects and the position was improved and they were offered better appointments and left. I actually got the assistance of the Adjutant-General to second some of the architects who were in his engineering department.

But if they take six months to write a letter how long will they take to give a permit?

He allowed us to have four or five of these people. As soon as they were seconded to building control they were released and as soon as they were released they left building control. We had much difficulty but for the last six weeks we have seconded to us from the Director-General of War Supplies a man called Beattie, who is in the Public Service, a very excellent man and he has come in to deal with the complaints. May I frankly admit that I myself as Building Controller have had difficulty in getting replies and I actually had to send telegrams. But I think that phase of the thing is finished. But I would appeal to the hon. member for Vereeniging, or any other hon. member to go and raise the question that you are complaining about. This particular thing the hon. member referred to I know about. The Deputy Building Controller and I wanted to issue a permit but we could not because the Director-General of War Supplies said there was no necessity for another dry-cleaning factory in Vereeniging. It was returned to them two or three times and finally they agreed to do it. If you have a committee whose job it is to recommend these things, you cannot ride roughshod over their wishes.

Businnes suspended at 12.45 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

When the debate was adjourned I was dealing with some of the remarks of the hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood). He suggested that building control so far as returned soldiers are concerned, should be handed over to the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation. All I have to say is this, in connection with that matter there is no trouble whatever. There is the compietesi co-operation and no permit is refused to the genuine returned soldier. He also referred to the fact that these men who were out of work in Cape Town should have been transferred to Johannesburg and Pretoria. It will be news to this House to know that in Johannesburg and Pretoria they are prepared to take quite a number of the coloured artisans of the Cape.

The Minister has undoubtedly made a very brave attempt to say something in order to justify a continuation of control as it is today, but I think he will agree with me in spite of his brave attempt he has given this House and the country no good and sound reasons for building control to continue on the lines it has been carried on during the last couple of years. I think I am fully justified in saying that practically every member of this House not only sympathises with the Minister, but commiserates with him in his thankless task. But we hope, and this is the point I want to make, the very arguments the Minister put forward this morning and the facts he has given this House must convince the hon. Minister it is impossible to control building operations properly and fairly in the way he has been trying to do in the last three or four years. Therefore I want to suggest to him —and I believe there are other hon. members and indeed the whole country will perhaps agree with me—that he must try control in a different way, not by controlling the number of permits, by controlling material and the men, but also by controlling the price. If you control the price of building material efficiently you will find that it will automatically control itself. Then I suggest to the hon. Minister, and I think every member is prepared to give the Minister all the assistance we possibly can, and even if our suggestions sometimes appear to be rather foolish we all intend to help him, I would suggest that the hon. Minister’s task may be made much easier if the control of building operations were allocated to the bodies concerned—the trade unions and the master builders.

They are on it.

Yes, they are just the nigger in the woodpile. The way you are trying to control building operations now is responsible for that. But once you have the trade unions, the people who supply the labour, once you have the master builders, the people who contract and do the job, once they can come together in consultation with the Minister, and in a way where they can advise the Minister how these things should be done, you will find a far more efficient control of building operations than we have had so far. I quite agree with the hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood) and I think the Minister and every member agrees, that building control, as carried out in the last couple of years, has become so unpopular that if it was left to the open vote of this; House it would never get an endorsement. Therefore there is something wrong with the system. I am not blaming anybody. The cases the Minister mentioned are out of his hands now, and I do not want to level any criticism at him, but if we want control to function properly not only the work but the prices have to be controlled. But the Minister should not try to tell the House there is a shortage of timber in South Africa. There I am afraid I must contradict the Minister, and I am backed by people with a better knowledge than I have and with a better knowledge than anybody in the country, the master builders. Some time ago they pointed out that there is no shortage whatever of timber. [Interruption.] I should be glad if hon. members would let a member have the floor and have his say when he is about it. If they would let him get on with his speech we might be able to do something, but we have this running fire of interruptions all the time, and even the Minister, when he was trying to make a most important statement, was not allowed to carry on for a single minute without interruption. There is always a lot of parrotcrying, which makes it impossible to make a statement, and I want to make this appeal that for the sake of the dignity of the House hon. members should give an opportunity to a member to say what he has to say. In regard to the control of material the hon. Minister quotes a number of articles that are short in South Africa. Well, I heard somebody say there was a shortage of locks. Do not tell me we cannot make locks in this country. There are people who can make these various articles, but there is no assured market, because control stands in the way of encouragement being given to these people to manufacture these articles required for our building. A large number of articles that today are being imported can be manufactured in South Africa, and we shall be able to carry on our building operations as the flow of material permits if our control is put on a proper basis. But the position now is that in certain quarters there is a lot of building material lying idle. People are holding it back in the expectation of attaining a permit in the near future. These articles are lying idle from month to month and from year to year, and building operations suffer. If the Minister will allow building operations to be carried on in proportion to the amount of material available they will be carried out systematically, but today it hinges round the permit; and the permit is withheld not because of any shortage of material for building, but because another department — which may have nothing whatever to say about the general position of building operations—intervenes and exercises its control. How such departments get their information, heaven only knows, but they tell the Building Controller, we must not give so-and-so a permit because the machinery required for that building is not obtainable in this country, and so forth. In that way you have unnecessary interference. Therefore you have unnecessary interference in building operations and the only sound way which will improve and lighten the position for the Minister, and make it possible for him to carry on building operations is to control material, and the people who are called upon to do the job. The trade unions and the master builders, will be the persons most concerned and will be able to tell you how many permits can be issued from time to time. But do not let other things be subject to building permits; let the building permits be subject to the material available. But you have the thing the other way round. Instead of saying that we will allow a number of permits justified by the material available, you simply say you will allow the material justified by the permits. That is wrong and the country has lost confidence in building control altogether and I think if the Minister would give this matter thought he will find that the task will become much easier than it has been. He has tried his utmost and he has failed because this problem was approached from the wrong angle altogether. Take these people into your confidence, the trade unions and the master builders, and you will be assisted by them more than you are today, when things are impossible because they make it so. They are there only in an advisory capacity and for that reason you cannot expect them to give the best advice. [Laughter.] Why should they, if their advice is constantly ignored? But put responsibility on their shoulders and you will have a different story altogether.

I would like to appeal to the hon. Minister with regard to Groote Schuur. I was born and bred in this part of the country and watch it with interest. I notice that Groote Schuur, where the flora used to be of the peculiar kind which is adaptable to the Table Mountain range, it is now being superseded by exotic plants. I notice for example that the old Cape Sugar Bush and the silver tree which used to grow on the slopes of Devil’s Peak are disappearing and in some cases have disappeared altogether. Instead of the wild sweet peas and bulbs we used to have we now have exotic grasses planted on the steep slopes of the mountain where there is very little soil and I am afraid that erosion will make things worse. Where before there were all these bushes and there was sufficient root in the soil to bind it, these exotic grasses were planted, and before the grass had time to root down the soil properly, wind and rain caused the ground to disintegrate, and whereas there used to be small footpaths one now finds great sluits. I am afraid that great damage will be done and I would like to see something done whereby we can bring back the old flora and even the old fir tree which after all has become almost a native, because it was imported here and you might call the old stone pine and the cluster pine almost as much Afrikaners as we are, and the colours of the stone pine mix well with the colours of our flora.

Quite lyrical in fact.

I hope that these old flora will be brought back so that the mountain can get back to its old condition, rather than this exotic condition which is now taking the place of the old flora.

May I have permission to speak for 30 minutes? I think the Minister will agree after hearing the speeches this morning that there is something very wrong with the control of building. The trouble seems to be that the Building Controller, like some of the other Controllers, ought to have control itself. There is no control over the Controller of Building and it is unfortunate that some investigation has not taken place long before this. There has been a tremendous amount of criticism in connection with building permits and it was stated in this House that there were a certain amount of malpractices in connection with the issue of building permits and there were also serious allegations made in the House, but we have heard nothing further about the matter. I think the hon. the Minister ought to have made some statement as to whether there was any truth in these allegations. It is the general complaint of everyone that the favoured few are in a position to obtain building permits, and I have received quite a number of complaints from Durban. Quite a number of flats have recently been built in Durban, in Musgrave Road, is one instance, but if a man applies for a permit to build a house, it is refused. A certain section of the community are able to obtain these permits and flats are being erected, but one cannot build a house. The housing shortage is very serious. I would like to appeal to the Labour Party to see whether it is not possible for them to use their influence with the trade unions to see whether in the near future non-Europeans, particularly natives, cannot be permitted to build their own houses. If we are going to have these highly skilled artisans erecting houses for our non-European people, I feel sure that the shortage will never be overtaken, and it will depend on what houses will be permitted to be built. Housing for Europeans will be fully dealt with before the non-Europeans are housed. What is going to be the procedure? How will we allocate these houses? I feel certain it is a question troubling every right-minded person, that the native should be allowed to build his own house. I feel it will take another five years to overtake the housing shortage in South Africa. If you can get a decent small house, fit for a native, for £200 built by their own labour, surely the trade unions ought not to object, so that the native can get a house for at least half the price it would cost if it were built entirely by European labour. Various circumstances could arise in a few years time where you have thousands of European artisans out of work and they are required for building houses for non-Europeans, and that would be the time to come back to having fully skilled labour for all houses. I would like to suggest to the Minister that he be prepared to recommend a cheaper kind of house for the non-European and for the Europeans until we have got over the shortage. We have these pre-fabricated materials which have been used all over the world and I think South Africa is an ideal country for that type of house. The Minister knows that we have a firm in Durban who claim that they will be able to house the majority of the non-European people if assisted with the necessary facilities within a year or two. It should be possible to withdraw that type of control for that type of house, but if it is going to be controlled by the Building Controllers and they insist upon its being built at a cost of £2,000 …

I am not concerned with how houses are built. We only give permission for them to be built.

But permits have to be issued and if permits are not granted for this type of house we are definitely delaying the progress of house building and it will take us 10 or 15 years before everyone has a house. If the non-Europeans are put on to building their own houses the trade unions ought to be prepared to agree to that. I want to ask the Minister to enquire into the question of these permits. Why allow all this dissatisfaction to exist? Two or three people, within a few days, can investigate the matter and satisfy the public outside that there is no favouritism and no blue-eyed boys receiving preference. It is unfortunate that the public are left under a misapprehension. The feeling is there and you cannot get away from it. Another matter is that one has to go to the Controller of Iron, the Controller of Glass and the controller of this and that, when one builds a house, instead of the whole of the control in regard to building being under one controller. One would imagine that it should be possible to have one or two controllers to deal with all these items and I hope the Minister will expedite the procedure. Then there is the item of fire brigades. A little while ago we had a series of fires on Table Mountain, almost an epidemie of mountain fires. At that time I raised the question in the House about it. I cannot understand why some remedy has not been found to save the beauty of the mountain instead of allowing it to be destroyed by fire. Part of the mountains are Government property and one would like a statement from the Minister in connection with the matter to see whether it is not possible to have some understanding with the Provincial Council and the Municipality which will effectively militate against mountain fires. I hope to raise the matter again under the agricultural vote and to deal with it more extensively there, but I feel that this is probably an opportune time to raise it and whether some more use cannot be made of the fire brigades in mountain fires. I would like to come to this serious fire which took place a matter of yards from the House of Assembly, at Darters. On that occasion I mentioned in a speech I made on 14th March various aspects of that fire, and various criticisms as to why the fire was not quenched. If we ever had a glaring example of a big fire in the midst of a city like Cape Town it is that one, and through some reason or other it was not effectively dealt with by the fire brigade. I am not really blaming the fire brigade, but it was not dealt with effectively. I think some sort of enquiry should be held to establish what the reason for the inefficiency was. I watched for some minutes and saw no water coming into the hoses. Whether that was due to the low pressure in the mains I cannot say, but it was rather strange that a week afterwards they had the mains up in Church Street, and were replacing them and I myself saw that some of the mains were corroded and did not have a diameter of more than two inches. We were told by Mr. Cheetham, of the Cape Town Municipality, that it is alleged that the Cape Town Municipality was unable to deal with mountain fires in the Peninsula, and it is suggested that the Minister of Lands should give some assistance. He said that the Council is always glad to receive assistance in fighting mountain fires and appreciated the efforts of naval and military men in that connection, but he went on to say that the fire started on Government property. He then proceeded to deal with the fire at Darters.

That should be discussed under the Irrigation Vote.

He says the first duty of a fire brigade is to save life and as there were two persons trapped in the building the greater portion of the personnel concentrated on that. It may be correct that the fire brigade has to save life, but let me refer to a letter sent to a prominent Cape Town newspaper in connection with this fire. Unfortunately the Cape Town papers never mind criticising what an hon. member says in the House, and if any of the public write to the controlled press in Cape Town the last thing they will do is to publish it, unless an hon. member of the United Party makes a statement, but if it comes from a member of the Dominion Party they do everything they can to ridicule it. This lady wrote to the paper, the “Cape Times”, which always misrepresents anything a member of the Dominion Party has to say, in connection with the fire. The “Cape Times” refused to publish this letter, but I think it is interesting as it justifies what I said with regard to the fire at Darters. She wrote as one of the two people rescued after the building was on fire and refers to the excuse that they had spent all their time on rescue work and therefore could not put out the fire. She referred to Mr. Cheetham’s statement that one of the causes of the inability of quenching the fire was because the fire brigade concentrated on rescuing people and says that she was one of the persons rescued, but she resents the insinuation that she was one of the causes of the destruction of her employer’s building. [Laughter.] She says that the true facts are that only five men concentrated on rescuing her but instead of erecting the ladders in Church Street, they erected them in the worst possible place, namely in Adderley Street, and the men had virtually to be implored to move into Church Street, which wasted a lot of time. She refers to Mr. Cheetham’s statement that there were five or six hoses within five minutes but says that it is an indisputable fact that the firemen in charge of the hose on the first water tower in Adderley Street sat there for 15 minutes waiting for water to come through his hose. The full letter reads as follows—

This caused a certain amount of ….

Amusement.

…. of worry to the people of Cape Town. Of course the City Council stated it only cost Cape Town a matter of £32,000 for the privilege of having a few fires in Cape Town. As the Government has a considerable amount of property in Cape Town I think it is only right that something should be done to safeguard this Government property, because there is not the slightest doubt if we have a fire near our Parliament Buildings the whole of the buildings may disappear. Let me say again I am not blaming the Fire Brigade, I am not blaming the City Council, but all I ask is when a £40,000 fire takes place in Cape Town, in Adderley Street, we should not have to be told that because a crowd gathered round the firemen could not discover the hydrants, but that there should be a sufficient pressure of water in Cape Town’s main street to ensure that should a fire of that nature occur again the whole place will not be gutted. I want to ask hon. members to imagine what might have taken place if Japan had been in a position to bomb Cape Town and to drop a few hundred incendiaries here while we have not a proper pressure of water. It has been said that I misinterpreted the case, that I was wrong when I said that for several minutes there was no water there and the brigade had to spend time in endeavouring to rescue certain people from the building. I say that the first job of any municipality—if they employ a fire brigade, and if there is not sufficient water to put out a fire in the main street—its first job is to see that the pressure is there and that the people whose job it is to fight the Lire know where the hydrants are, irrespective of whether there are some people standing around or not. [Interruptions.] Some members may think this is a trivial matter, but it is not a trivial matter at all, a £40,000 building going up like that.

It might have spread here.

Yes, it might have spread here, and it might have done a lot of good if it had. As a member of the Internal Arrangements Committee I may say —and hon. members should know—we have a library attached to the House, and in the event of a fire breaking out here not one scrap of that library would be left. No money could replace that library if it was destroyed. The Internal Arrangements Committee have been bringing up this matter time and again. I wonder what would happen to the library if there was a fire and we had to wait 15 minutes for the right pressure of water, and if the firemen did not know where the hydrants were. I have been coming down here for about five years, and there have been quite a large number of destructive fires during that period.

I should like to bring a few matters to the Minister’s attention. The hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) mentioned the matter here this morning in connection with the Maize Control Board, and hon. members opposite looked very surprised, as if it had been taken out of the air. But from my knowledge as a member of the board the facts are exactly as the hon. member for Humansdorp gave them, namely that the firm Katzenellenbogen of Pretoria received a building permit to erect a building to the value of £70,000 or £80,000. The Maize Control Board only asked permission to add to their existing building to the value of £12,000. That was refused. I should like the Minister to investigate the matter. It was suggested to the Maize Control Board that they should rent one floor of the building of that firm. For that they wanted to charge us £400 per month. In view of the fact that the Maize Control Board only wanted an extension which would cost £12,000 it can be calculated what it would have cost the Maize Control Board per annum to have part of its personnel in that other building. For £12,000 they could have erected the necessary addition and housed all the personnel. There is another matter I wish to refer to. Personally I receive many complaints about the way in which the Controller replies to the public when they apply for a building permit. I have a whole packet of complaints before me. The Controller might perhaps say to me and to other people: It will serve no purpose for you again to write to me or to telephone my office and to make further enquiries until you hear from me. But the general public is not satisfied with that, and regards it as an insult for the office of the Controller simply to say: Your permit is refused and your application will be dealt with in a group which will perhaps come up for discussion months later, and you may not enquire about it further. The man who applied wants to know what happened. He waits for four or six or seven months and hears nothing. The public strongly objects to the manner in which these circulars—one can see that they are roneoed letters—are sent. They are simply signed by a junior official and nothing is said in them. The public will not swallow that. They want decent and courteous treatment from the controller. Another matter is the manner in which permits are granted. We have today heard of various cases, and it is quite clear, after what was said here, that there is something wrong with the system of building control, and very wrong too. I should however like to ask the Minister to enquire what quota the platteland received of the permits issued. What quota of buildings erected does the platteland receive? I have a number of cases here, some of which I brought to the Minister’s attention, of co-operatives who necessarily have to extend. I know of quite a number of co-operatives in the Free State where the products of the farmer lie outside exposed to the elements, where damage is done to foodstuffs, while these people cannot obtain permits to build. Why does that happen? I believe that the Minister must realise under what difficult circumstances we produce foodstuffs. Must it then lie outside exposed to the elements when it has been produced? And all that in spite of the fact that it has been pointed out that permits are being granted for holiday houses and for racing stables and such things. But the co-operatives can obtain no permit to protect foodstuffs. I wish to mention specific cases. There is the case of the Kroonstad Western. I know of a case in Senekal, where the Minister due to the interference of the hon. member for Heilbron (Maj. P. W. A. Pieterse) has now caused a permit to be granted. There is the case of the Platbergse Co-operative in Harrismith, where they urgently require a permit. There the stuff is lying outside exposed to the weather and the controller will not permit them to build. I wish to request the Minister very urgently to devote attention to that. We know that he has many posts and is responsible for much and must allow himself to be led by the heads of departments and divisions, but as regards building permits the Minister must give a little personal attention to the matter. There is something radically wrong. The Minister must also see to it that the platteland receives its rightful share of the quota. Then there is another side of the matter which is not clear to me. I want to put the question whether the Department of Public Works rules the Minister, or is the Minister really their chief? My experience is that one can succeed in getting the approval of the Minister of Public Works for a building, but then the department comes and puts that application at the bottom of the list, and they take another one from the bottom and put it on top, in spite of the fact that the building for which the Minister has given his approval is of the greatest importance. I ask the Minister to investigate these matters and to see to it that proper justice is done. I think that the public can demand a fair distribution of the available material and manpower we have today.

I do not think the Minister realises the depth of the feeling against the present administration of building control in Johannesburg: and I doubt very much whether there is any solution to that position unless there is a complete reorganisation from the head downwards. I doubt very much whether Col. Holgate is the right man in the right place, and I feel that if, during the three years he has administered that control, he has not been able to make a better job of it than now the sooner the Minister faces the position and puts in a new chief, the better for the country. I consider that proper building control is the cornestone of the solution of one of the greatest post-war problems in the country, and unless it is attacked at once and attacked firmly, we will land ourselves in a morass from which it will be almost impossible to withdraw, and the man responsible for that position is undoubtedly the man answerable for control. It is for the Minister to see that the head is changed and that a man is put in charge and the system arranged on a basis which will ensure fair play to the people of South Africa. Last year I brought to the notice of the Minister one of a number of cases. It was the case of a constituent of mine who had applied to build a house in Pretoria. He had waited for three months. The house was within the terms of the limitation imposed by the control. Having received no reply to his application, he sent in another application. He waited another three months, and then he ascertained that three of his friends who had sent in applications had had their applications granted, but as such a long time had elapsed before their applications were granted, they had acquired other premises and had decided not to build. This man then wrote to the Building Controller and said: “Will you not assign one of these permits to me they do not want to build, and I have waited six months.” The Controller would hear of nothing of that sort. Then this man came to see me, and I saw the Minister and the Minister, I must say, dealt with the matter at once. He wrote to the Controller and said: “Issue a permit”; and then, though he had to wait another three weeks, a permit was issued to him. My point is it is a scandal that that type of case should be dealt with in such a manner that it has to be brought to the notice of the Minister himself. That shows hopeless inefficiency We know there are complaints all over South Africa about that control. It is spoken of as a ramp—and much worse things are said; and if after three years we still have that criticism it is time that the control was changed and placed on a firm and efficient basis on the eve of peace. We on this side of the House, just as much as hon. members on that side of the House, look to the Minister to see that is done. It is almost a matter of course that when a man sends in an application for a permit to build, his first set of plans are lost. I know of a case where three sets of plans were lost one after the other. I went over to see the Building Controller who, as may be imagined, received me very coolly. When I explained what had happened he did say: “Let them send in another plan, it need not be too formal, and the application will be granted.” That control has to be put right, and the sooner it is put right the better, not only for this Government but for the whole of South Africa. There is one other matter, of quite a different character, I wish to refer to. I would like the Minister to consider the position of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria. This museum was built 30 years ago and only a third of it was completed. Twice since then money has been voted for the completion of the building, but it has never been completed, and a large number of very valuable exhibits are deteriorating in cellars where they have been stored for very many years, and another large number of historical exhibits of great value to South Africa are stored in the old museum in the Zoological Gardens in Pretoria. That museum is a very suitable place, with some slight alterations, for a fresh-water aquarium. There has been a desire on the part of the Provincial Administration and on the part of a number of municipalities in the Transvaal, to establish a fresh-water aquarium and this in principle has been agreed to, and a suitable site for such an aquarium is this old museum in the Zoological Gardens. For 15 years the board of the National Zoological Gardens has been trying to get the Minister to complete this museum in Paul Kruger Street, Pretoria, so that they can make the necessary alterations to establish this fresh-water aquarium, and I would urge upon the Minister, as one of his post-war plans, to provide for the extension of the museum at an early date, so as to enable ….

I have already dealt with that.

I have only received this recently, and I am very pleased to hear from the Minister he has dealt with it, and I hope that next year provision will be made to see that the building is proceeded with as early as possible.

I rise just to discuss a little further a matter raised’ here by the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer). The Minister tried to give a reply about the large number of buildings which have recently been built at Hermanus. He said it was permitted owing to the shortage of work prevalent at the time. Therefore it was allowed in 1943-’44 that these people could build. I wish to ask the Minister whether that is the only place which applied for permits, and I further wish to ask him why such a large number, 101 buildings, were erected at Hermanus. If people were unemployed I think there were also other places which applied for building permits during that time. Why this large number at Hermanus? I put a further question to the Minister, namely which of the persons who built such large houses at Hermanus are resident in the Cape Peninsula? The Minister said that he understands that eight of the persons are resident in the Cape Peninsula. If the Minister admits that there are eight persons who were resident here, it is evident that he knew, or the Controller knew, that those people would not live there, that they have houses in Cape Town, and that they want the houses at Hermanus for other purposes. I do not wish to ascribe motives or influences to the Minister, but it is peculiar that? when rich or well-to-do people who already have one or two or more houses apply, they are permitted to build. I do not wish to mention names and therefore I omitted names also in my question, but there are some of those people who have properties in Cape Town and who got permission to build at Hermanus. Now the Minister says that no houses were built which cost more than the permissible amount. But why was it permitted that people who have houses in Cape Town and who live there could build these large properties at Hermanus? I should like the Minister to ask the Controller what the reasons are for allowing it. I know that the Minister does not have personal knowledge of every building in South Africa in connection with which a permit is granted. The Minister cannot know about every case, because there are applications from Pretoria and from Paarl and from all parts of the country, but I would still like to ask the Minister, or the head of the Department, why these buildings were allowed at Hermanus while building permits were refused in other places. Unfortunately we cannot question the Building Controller here. He would have a much harder time than the Minister, but the Minister is the responsible person in this House, and we are asking him. I now come to another question which I put, namely: How many buildings, exclusive of blocks of flats and Government buildings, of over £4,000, and how many alterations to buildings in connection with dog or horse racing of more than £4,000 were permitted in each year of the war by the Building Controller. The Minister answered that it is not possible to say how many buildings of more than £4,000 were allowed to be built. Well if one excludes flats and Government buildings it ought not to be so difficult. If it is impossible for the Minister to answer that question, it must be a large number which was permitted, and seeing that material, according to the statement of the Minister, is so scarce, we wish to ask why such a large number of luxury buildings costing more than £4,000 was allowed to be erected. But we go further, and in this connection again I wish to read the reply of the Minister to a question in regard to permits granted in connection with horse racing and dog racing. I am not referring to the one dealt with by the Minister, but to a few others. The Rand Sporting Club, the Newmarket Racecourse, was permitted to devote approximately £4,000 to buildings in three years. In one year £1,100 was allowed for stables for horses, £2,200 for a fodder room for the stables and a room for natives and then again another £675. In reply to the question why he permitted these buildings to be erected, he stated that it was “in order to provide employment in the building industry, seeing that at that time it was necessary”, and he further stated that “no controlled material was used”. I do not know how one can build stables for horses without using controlled material. One must need timber and cement.

Cement was never controlled.

But it was so scarce that one could not obtain it, and the Minister gave that as one of the reasons why building could not be allowed. The Minister must not now grasp at every little straw in order to evade the matter. Then the Minister further replied that at Kenilworth, in Cape Town, in one year £5,500 was spent to repair buildings after the military occupation of the racecourse. We do not know whether the military broke down the place or what. But say for example that buildings were broken down or destroyed by the military, why should permits be allowed for horse races while permits for dwelling houses for people cannot be allowed? That is the point. Then there is further the Milnerton Turf Club, which also spent £700 “for public health reasons, on lavatories”. During this year they spent £700 on lavatories, and during the same year another £500 on lavatories. That is £1,200 for the Milnerton Turf Club for lavatories. I think there must be a mistake. I cannot understand how they can spend so much on that in one year. Then we come to the Durban Turf Club which spent £10,000 “for public health reasons”. That was to replace unhealthy accommodation, where typhus infection had arisen in native barracks. I cannot understand what these native barracks which cost so much money have to do with the Durban Turf Club. In any case it was spent in connection with racing. Then we come to the dogs. At Klipriviersberg £1,300 was spent in 1943 to replace a building which was condemned by the municipal authorities. That was dog racing. In 1944 the same place again spent £1,000 “to accommodate increased families”. The family had now become so large that in a year’s time the house had to be built “to accommodate the increased family”. Then we turn to dog racing and there we find that again lavatories were built. It seems to me the whole thing just consists of lavatories. Horse racing requires lavatories and dog racing requires lavatories. That is peculiar. I wish to point out to the Minister that when application is made to the Controller essential reasons are still given. There is a large shortage of houses today, and the Controller ought to have enough common sense to realise that he should give preference to applications for the building, of houses over applications for the building of lavatories at horse racing and dog racing courses. I think if hon. members opposite look facts in the face they must agree with what the hon. member for Humansdorp said here. He asked that the control system should be revised, that certain of the Controllers who are inefficient should be dismissed and that the actual needs of the population should be considered first. I think the House will agree with us, and the Minister must not just simply get up and try to protect his controllers just because they belong to his Department. We know it is his duty to protect his officials, but where these things happen it is the duty of the Minister to reprimand his officials.

During the course of the discussion on this vote reference has been made to the investigations, and the research work conducted under the aegis of the Public Works Department. I refer in particular to Vote 3 on page 108, “Investigation of the Possibilities of Local Manufacture of Building Material”, “Assistance to the Witwatersrand University”, “Experimental Building Expenditure”. These items, I think, indicate very clearly that the Minister is more than a controller of building; he is also a promoter of building. I want therefore to direct the attention of the House briefly to the functions of the Minister in his second capacity, that is, as promoter of building; and in particular, the question of research. Earlier in the year I asked the hon. Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation a question in connection with the research that had been conducted under the National Housing Commission. He told the House that no research had yet been done. That means that the Public Works Department, under the hon. Minister of Public Works, has conducted the only research that has been done, namely that conducted at the University of the Witwatersrand. The cost given in the vote is £6,000. I suppose the total cost for the investigation work done over the past three years has come to not less than £10,000. Hon. members recognise the value of research and realise how fundamental it is to our housing and our industrial programme; we regret the neglect in South Africa of research facilities which should be provided under the State. I would like the Minister to say what this research, and this investigation, have produced, during the war, of real assistance to the building industry; and state what help it has been in speeding up building in this country. The Minister knows that the National Housing Commission has built no national houses as yet; that it has not built a single house for returned veterans; that it has built no experimental houses; that it has not yet reported on pre-fabricated houses; and that it has done no research. I believe we are in a position of very dangerous stagnation in South Africa in regard to our housing programme. We can, of course, pass the blame to the National Housing Board; but the Public Works Department is also responsible in this matter. I say that for two reasons. First, it is apparent—and we members of Parliament have to rely largely on the Press for much of our information—that the efforts of the University of the Witwatersrand in connection with research, and the other experimental activities under the Public Works Department in that institution, have not been very fruitful. For example, can the Minister tell us the position in regard to research into temporary houses, in regard to transition houses, in regard to materials other than cement or wood or concrete. I think an obligation is on the Minister to justify his vote, particularly the vote for research at the University of the Witwatersrand. Secondly, the Public Works Department through the Minister, has declared that the inequality in the issue of building permits has been directly due to the inequality in the distribution of labour for building in this country. Take the case of Durban. In answer to a question I asked the Minister some time ago, he stated that the relatively small quota of permits given to the city of Durban was due to the fact that Durban had a relatively small labour supply. I want to put this point to the Minister: If that reduced supply of labour in Durban has been due to the fact that men have gone on active service or on Government service outside Durban, then surely it is penalising Durban to withhold permits for a reason like that. If that is so, could not the Minister in conjunction with the Controller of Manpower use his influence to see that the available labour is spread equitably over the country, and in particular in those areas from which he has had strong pressure for building. Could he not use his influence for example to have native labour used, for the erection of native housing? The Minister is not unaware of what is happening in that respect in Durban; or of what is happening on a bigger scale in Pietermaritzburg. The Public Works Department has very considerable powers in connection with this matter; and the Minister, both as the controller and the promoter of housing, should use his influence more to speed up the building programme, first by a policy of temporary housing. We should keep in mind, appreciatively, what the city of Cape Town is doing in that respect. It has decided to adopt a plan of temporary housing. The Minister should also take a definite stand in regard to transitional housing; and particularly in regard to research work. All these things come definitely within the scope of the Public Works Department under the Minister. It will be a most regrettable thing for the country if the Minister is slowing down his activities, until the somnolent National Housing Commission wakes up and does something. I hope it is not another case of “passing the buck”. In the meantime, the veterans of the country, the lower income groups in particular, and the ordinary people who are requiring houses, are being denied facilities frequently promised by the Minister and his colleagues. I want to conclude by referring to the Minister’s remarks in connection with pre-fabricated houses. I refer to the splendid example that Great Britain is setting in that respect. It is well known that the British Government has adopted a national plan of temporary housing using a pre-fabricated type of house. According to the official information I have, England proposes to build 2,500 of these houses a week, i.e. half of the national requirements. I refer to the Portal house. It is constructed of steel. It is a truly prefabricated house. This Portal house will have two or three bedrooms and a living room. The rooms will be heated from the kitchen; the kitchen and the bathroom are two separate and fully equipped units. I understand that this house can be built in about 220 man hours, i.e. one tenth of the time it takes to build an ordinary brick house. The expense is not much less than the pre-war cost of building a brick house; but it is quite clear that the British Government is not putting cost first in its postwar housing programme; but is putting the desperate human needs of its people first. I want to ask the Minister what interests in South Africa are preventing him from doing something on the same lines. What programme, if any, for temporary housing on such lines has been recommended to him? Is it possible for our steel industry to build a house on similar lines, say, to the Portal house in England? There is housing crisis in South Africa. That has been very evident from this debate; perhaps the Minister has got certain undeserved “cracks” in this debate merely because of the psychosis due to the feat that we shall not complete our housing programme in time. We are building only one-fourth of our requirements; I believe that, if the Minister would use his influence, he could render a rich service to the country in speeding up our national building programme.

I want to take up at the point where the hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Sullivan) left off in regard to the question of the housing shortage, and I want to be little more parochial in that I want to confine myself to the critical position that exists in Durban today. What is more, Mr. Chairman, I want to warn the Minister that Durban, in the next three or four months, will be faced with what I regard as the greatest crisis that it has ever faced in regard to any problem, even including the food problem. That is the crisis of acute housing shortage. This shortage exists at the moment and has been brought about by three factors, I think. The first is obviously the shortage of artisans with which I want to deal in a moment, secondly it is due to the housing of artisans who have been sent to Durban to do essential ship repair work. May I add that those artisans have come down with their families too. Thirdly, it is due to the large increase in the Indian population, and the natural expansion from there. £500,000 worth of properties have been bought from Europeans sinct the passage of the Pegging Act. I am raising this question because the Minister indicated very clearly in his statement earlier today that the policy at the moment of the building control department is one based upon the issue of permits in accordance with the artisans in a particular area. That being so, and in view of those factors, that is firstly, the question of the shortage of artisans; then I submit if this House and the Minister were to take into consideration the fact that Durban, according to the Department of Defence, has produced more recruits, pro rata to its population, than any other town. I am not trying to eulogise the people of Durban, but I am trying to face cold facts, and the fact is that Durban, pro rata to its population, has the greatest number of recruits who have gone into the army. I do want to point out to the Minister that that being so, there is obviously an acute shortage of artisans in Durban, because many of the men who enlisted were drawn from the ranks of artisans into the sappers, and if the Minister is going to base the policy of issuing permits on the numbar of artisans in a given area, then I do suggest that he is penalising the people of Durban for their patriotism. I want to suggest that the Minister is putting a price on the patriotism of Durban and he is aggravating the position which is likely to become graver in the next few months. I want to suggest to him that if other Government departments have seen fit to conscript labour for the purpose of essential ship repair work, and if we are to regard housing as a national emergency, which I think we must, then that policy of his department can only become effective and equitable if his department saw to it that labour was conscripted from other parts of the Union. The example of Hermanus has been quoted today. I want to suggest that the Minister might have served the needs of this country far better if instead of issuing permits for the erection of luxury buildings in Hermanus, he had rather conscripted this labour and sent it to Durban.

For private work?

Yes, I don’t care who builds houses. I just want to add one other point in this connection and it is that when this new scheme in regard to the training of artisans comes into being, I do ask that in view of the fact that Durban has had a price placed upon its patriotism and in view of the fact that Durban has been asked to house thousands of artisans for essential ship repair work, and in view of the fact that the housing position is going to become critical in the next six months, and in view of the fact that the Government in conscripting housing in Durban for artisans employed on ship repair work, that the Minister will do everything in his power to see that labour and materials are eiquitably distributed by his department throughout the country, particularly in regard to these trainees. In order that the Minister may be able to carry out a policy under which there will be a better distribution of materials, I ask that the Minister should co-operate with the other departments with a view to ensuring equitable distribution of the available material and labour. I would again emphasise that if this matter is not tackled vigorously in the near future, I firmly believe that an extremely critical position will arise in Durban, a greater crisis than we have ever had in Durban, even including the food crisis.

I arise to make my contribution on the question of criticism in respect of building control. In order that one might emphasise, if that is necessary, the need for a strong hand and wise and imaginative control of the resources which are at present in this country, may I say at the outset also that the hon. Minister of Public Works is probably one of the most, if not the most, approachable Ministers in the Cabinet? May I say also that it is because of that fact, that he has constantly been forced to overrule decisions of his controllers, and to use his ministerial authority in order to bring down what might have been a very grave social problem, to mere vocal criticism? We do know that at the outset of the war there was no control of essential building material, with the result that people were able to procure certain materials. When the control system was introduced, people were forced to rely upon an approach to the Department in order to get permits. I merely want to repeat the circumstances of a particular case which more effectively demonstrates the need for imagination and personal supervision, if not a complete re-organisation of this Department. I refer to facts which were published within the last week or so in a Cape Town newspaper. There was a person in Cape Town who wanted to build twelve flats. He purchased land in Cape Town on the sea front for the purpose of building those flats. He purchased something like 24,000 or 28,000 square feet, and he had all the material necessary at his disposal before the control system came into operation, for the erection of those twelve or fourteen flats. When he came with his architect for the purpose of building, he found what is not uncommon when one buys land on an advertisement, that actually he had bought 8,000 or 10,000 square feet less, with the result that he could not build the twelve or fourteen flats. Before he had an opportunity of building, building control was introduced and he was forced to use all the building material he had or to let it lie. Well, he wished to utilise it and he proposed to add to a building which he already had on a site that was already available to him. He proposed to build no less than 52 rooms at a time when the people in Cape Town were crying out for rooms. He proposed to utilise the material he had for that purpose. He wanted only a few tons of steel for reinforced concrete from the Controller. He submitted his plans to the Building Controller, and he pointed out that he only wanted a ton or two of steel for reinforced concrete. He could not get it. He sent an application to Johannesburg and again the answer came that he could not get it, and for about six months his material was idle and his workmen were idle. Then he approached me as the member of Parliament in whose constituency he was and in whose constituency he proposed to build the 52 rooms. I immediately put up these facts, which seemed so obviously reasonable, to the Minister and immediately a permit was authorised. Within a week of my representation the permit was authorised. This man built the 52 rooms and after he had built them he found that there was a building with a pitched roof on his property that was obscuring not only the light but all the other amenities of the 52 rooms. He applied to have the pitched roof dropped. He wanted to convert the pitched roof into a flat roof by building an extra wall. He did not want any material for that. He proposed to build a wall and to utilise the two walls so that he could remove a lot of obsolete tin structure that was obscuring the view. He submitted his plans to the municipality and at the same time asked the Building Controller for permission. Within seven days the municipality wrote back to say that he could go on with it provided he obtained a permit from the Building Controller. No one anticipated any objection for a single moment. After a month, with the consent of the municipality and thinking that his permit must go through he started to alter the roof. He did not want any controlled material other than about half a dozen sheets of corrugated iron which had been left over from his extra bedrooms.

Why did he have to apply?

He must apply. He does not apply for building material but for a permit to lower the roof. He had to apply also for permission to utilise the bricks that were left over when he built the 52 rooms, in order to put up a wall, and he had to apply for permission to sheet over the two walls so that he could demolish the tin structure. He thought his application was so reasonable that he anticipated the permit. More than a month went by and he got no acknowledgement. He then assumed that the matter was in order, and he proceeded to make the alterations. One of the Public Works inspectors came along to see what he was doing. He explained that he had applied for a permit but that he had not yet got it. He showed the Public Works inspector what he had done. In the process of taking down the pitched roof he destroyed no less than 400 rats which had been liberated as a result of the destruction of the tin shanties. When the Building Controller found that he had anticipated the granting of the permit, he refused to grant the permit. This man was prosecuted last week, four or five months after he made his application. The permits had not even been refused by that date, and one permit was refuséd four months after he applied. Those are facts which are making building control in South Africa a thing of contempt in the minds of the public. These are facts which hold up Building Controllers to ridicule. Not only that, but they undermine the goodwill of the public which the Minister should not allow his Department to undermine. If there is one department in the whole of the Government service that has been under-mining the effective goodwill with which the public of South Africa supported this Government when it came into power, it has been the Building Controllers and other controllers, and it is no exaggeration to say that everything that came from the hon. member for Vereeniging (Lt.-Col. Rood) and the hon. member for Pretoria (Sunnyside) (Mr. Pocock) is, in fact, justifiable. The people do insist that something definite shall come out of the public criticism which is being directed against this Government department, by virtue of the fact that its control in the building industry is holding up Government enterprise and Government departments to ridicule and contempt. [Time limit.]

There are various points I wish to raise in connection with this matter of building control. As members have expressed their views on both sides of this House there is no doubt that there is considerable dissatisfaction with the whole system of building control in this country. I wish specifically to support the view of the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) and other members, like the member who has just spoken. There are two points which cropped up in my own constituency and which gave me considerable trouble. In the first instance it was the case of an uncompleted building to which the Minister referred this morning. In some instances, in Johannesburg and elsewhere, they have given permission for the building of flats and for the completion of shops and offices or something else on the bottom floor. I have an instance in Pretoria where a plan was originally passed for building a block of flats. When these plans were submitted to the municipality, the municipal authorities at the last moment refused to allow the flats to be built on the ground floor. Then the applicants applied for the bottom floor to be turned into shops and it was refused. They then applied that it should be turned into lounges which could serve the people in the flats in the adjoining hotel, but this was refused, and the building is now standing in the air on pillars. I went to the building controller and said it was a simple matter to allow some other construction because the plant and the men and everything were there on the spot and they still had to plaster the walls, but no permission was given. I feel that in some instances permission should be given and the building controller should be more lenient. If this building in future has to be completed it will cost the applicants considerably more. These people made the financial arrangements to complete the whole building. It was not due to any fault of theirs, or to a contravention of the regulations. It was simply that it clashed with the regulations of the municipality. These men have been put into financial difficulty, but no consideration would be granted by the building controller. That building is still uncompleted today. I understand from an interruption made by the Minister this morning that the objection to the other case that came to my notice in Pretoria was that old material was used. The applicants were in my constituency, people who were severely hit by building control, and because they were a new firm, by taxation. These people bought an old building. They had all the material and men, because they are building contractors also, amongst other things. Their men were unemployed. They were holding several of them on half-time. Some of the men waited unemployed for the firm to get a new job to carry on. They would need no new material or controlled material. They had all the material required for the bioscope, the projectors, the screens, etc., stored away. Building material is scarce in this country. We gave details to the building controller showing that sufficient material would be saved in this building to complete one other cottage for which a permit had been asked, but no permit would be given. Eventually ’our efforts were simply ignored and the matter is still incomplete. I feel that a little more consideration should be given especially if the building contractors are hard hit. As a matter of fact I one day took these gentlemen to the Minister’s office and I can only express my thanks for the courtesy with which the Minister received us. But the authorities in Johannesburg adopt the attitude as if they are the dictators of building and far more important than the Minister himself. When the municipal delegation went over to see the controller in Johannesburg the whole lot of them came back dissatisfied by the discourtesy with which they had been received by the building controller. That is a very common complaint of members of Parliament and others who have to go there on essential visits. The reason given to us for refusing that alteration to the building outside Pretoria was because of the scarcity of labour, but we proved to the controller that we had the labour waiting and these people would be forced to pay off their men if they did not get a permit, but it was still refused. On the question of the acknowledgment of letters I have had this experience myself, that if we write to the building controller at Johannesburg, not only does he not reply to the correspondence but we get no acknowledgment and do not know what is going on. I remember plans being put up by me before the Session of Parliament and I handed the plans, correspondence and letters in myself, but I have had no reply to this date. I have had no intimation whatever. I had stressed to the controller the urgency of the matter and asked him, if he turned it down, to let me know as soon as possible, but I have heard nothing. The question of giving preference to soldiers and issuing permits to them was stressed by many people and especially by the Minister. I have many people in my constituency who complain that they are not able to obtain permits for essential dwelling houses for which they applied eight months ago.

Are they returned soldiers?

No, but these people could not get permits because the controller stated that preference was to be given to returned soldiers. But in spite of what the Minister said this morning and the recommendations of the Demobilisation Committees, the returned soldiers in that very area did not build. There is a contractor in that area who buys up their permits at £25 a piece, builds the houses and ‘sells them on a speculative basis, and the people who urgently need these permits for houses to house their families are unable to get permits, because soldiers get preference. But these permits are of no benefit to the soldiers, because the speculative buyer takes them over. One builder is going round and building a large number of houses on permits bought from soldiers. There is another urgent point, and that is a thing which I believe, according to correspondence I recieved a day or two ago, has been refused by the building controller. That is the erection of a hostel for the Pretoria Medical Faculty close to the Pretoria hospital. The position is so serious that students who want to attend the medical school have to go up and down the streets to look for accommodation. People in Pretoria have given an undertaking, and have the support of the Pretoria Municipality and of the University of Pretoria, for this hostel, but as far as I can understand permission was refused for building it. I want to ask the Minister to assist us in urgent matters like these, and to intervene in this matter and to see that these permits are issued.

I fully realise and appreciate the criticism that has been levelled against building control and the dissatisfaction which seems to exist in connection with the matter. It was said that there should be reorganisation and a clean-up and the hon. member for Pretoria (City) (Mr. Davis) suggests that the Deputy Building Controller, Col. Holgate, should be relieved of his position. I have worked in the closest association with Col. Holgate, and I do not know what the position of building control would have been but for him. Hon. members must realise that for every permit granted there are three others who feel that they are entitled to receive a permit. I intend myself going to Pretoria next week and putting in two or three days at Johannesburg at the Building Control Office to improve the organisation from the point of view of attending to the correspondence. I have had other complaints similar to the one referred to by the hon. member for Gezina (Dr. Swanepoel) that these letters are not acknowledged. In Johannesburg they must have at least 4,000 applications, all in order, and merely waiting for the time factor to issue permits. I am speaking now of houses and to a certain extent of flats. Pretoria is the worst place in the Union for the issue of permits and I am going to ask the hon. member to give me the name of this contractor who is buying permits. I heard rumours about it in Johannesburg six months ago when I first said that returned soldiers would get preference, and I told them to examine every applicant who is a returned soldier and I want to attend to it because this practice is breaking down the idea we have of giving permits to genuine applicants. If the hon. member would also give me details of the cases he referred to, or which another hon. member referred to I shall go into the matter next week. The hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) criticised building control and suggested that we should control material and not building. Well, we had a conference in the beginning of February and we sent over to Great Britain and the United States a mission headed by Mr. Bowstred of Johannesburg. There were other members also from the organisation of the Director-General of Supplies, and our Chief Quantity Surveyor, Mr. Prentice, and they went over for the purpose of seeing what they could do with regard to building material. The mission was successful up to a point. They felt that the position would be eased, as regards the importing of building materials, including timber, but no sooner had they returned but we were told that shipping would be curtailed for three months. That is happening at present. We do not know where we are in connection with the matter. Shipping plays a very important part in the importing of material. The hon. member says that there is plenty of timber. I hope he is right.

Do you admit that there is still material lying idle?

Yes, and I admit that a man may have material and that not being able to use it is a fact which was taken into account by the control. I want to repeat what I said this morning, that no permit is granted unless it receives the approval of one or other of the committees, and all the permits which have been complained of here today have received the approval of one or other of these committees. All these Hermanus permits were granted by the Cape Town Advisory Committee, on which there was an architect, a master builder, a quantity surveyor and a trade unionist, and the chairman of which is Mr. Harvey, who used to be in the P.W.D. The complaints made by the hon. member for Mossel Bay (Dr. Van Nierop) about some of the permits granted being for racing stables and for dog racing, if that list is examined, no local committee should have refused to grant those permits. Take the question of Durban. Typhus had broken out. The Durban Turf Club have a large number of natives employed in connection with their buildings, and the building was condemned. The natives had to be housed. All we agreed to do was to give housing accommodation to the natives. That was the biggest item, £10,000. But the point is this that in October, 1943, and the first part of 1944, we were looking for people to start building, and that is one of the reasons why the hon. member for Green Point (Mr. Bowen) got his 52 rooms. If it were not for the labour shortage he would not have got it.

But the controller refused it twice.

I do not know about that but representations were made to me and the permit was granted. As I said this morning, when you have 37,000 permits at a cost of £63,000,000, something must go wrong. I cannot say that it will not go wrong in future, but every effort is being made to see that building control is being conducted in the interests of the country. The member for Durban (Central) (Mr. Derbyshire) raised the question of the fire brigade in Cape Town and the lack of water. I have no control over the Cape Town Fire Station or the municipality. The amounts that are on the estimates are contributions made by the Government of 1s. per £100 to the municipalities for the use of their fire brigades in the event of trouble, and it is spread all over South Africa, Cape Town getting the biggest amount. The municipalities complain bitterly that it is not sufficient, but that is a matter which will be dealt with at the conference in August to be held between the municipalities, Provincial Councils and the Central Government. As regards the matter of the danger of fires on the mountain at Cape Town, all the departments were in co-operation, and the navy and army assisted. It is a serious position and I do not know how one can check it. I agree that the destruction caused is regrettable. The hon. member for Mowbray (Capt. Hare) raised the question of the flora on Table Mountain. We are fully alive to the position. I have appointed a committee consisting of the Secretary for Public Works, the Government Forestry Officer and the Forestry Officer of the Cape Town Municipality, to give us their advice, and they have formulated a plan and we are carrying out the advice they gave in connection with the matter. I hope—and no one is more anxious than the Prime Minister to see Table Mountain restored, if human effort can do so, to the position which it occupied before they planted all those pine trees—that their efforts will have good results. The hon. member for Durban (Berea) (Mr. Sullivan) dealt constructively with building control and the experimental work we had carried out. This work has been carried out in conjunction with the Rand University but owing to the formation under Brigadier Schonland of this new research bureau, that work now is being transferred to Brigadier Schonland’s Bureau. But I agree with the hon. member that a lot of useful research work can still take place to find substitutes for materials to solve some of our difficulties in connection with building. He also referred to the question of pre-fabricated houses and referred to the Portal house in Britain. That was specially reported on by Mr. Prentice. It was one of the things he was asked to do, to examine pre-fabricated houses in America and Britain. His report is not very favourable. Steel houses in South Africa is a proposition he would not like to recommend. But my position as Building Controller has nothing to do with the construction of houses or Government houses or municipal houses. That belongs to the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation. We have done what we could do and I have handed over to the new research bureau, under a man who is probably one of South Africa’s most able sons, Brigadier Schonland. All I can say is this, that as far as the municipalities are concerned and the Minister of Social Welfare and the National Planning Council and the National Housing Board and the Natal Housing Board which will be formed, they will have no difficulty to get material as far as the building control is concerned. We have made provision here for 64 per cent. of our expenditure for a building programme of dwellings of one kind or another. For every national house that is built, a house for a private individual will probably have to be sacrificed. Last year the municipalities in putting forward their plans said they would build £4,000,000 worth of houses. They only built £1,700,000 worth, but building control saw to it that the other £2,300,000 went into private houses; permits were given. There is necessity to have control. Personally I am very pleased that we have had this frank discussion about the matter. Nothing would please me more than to give up this position and if we could give effect to what the hon. member for Krugersdorp suggested I would be glad. I am going up next week to discuss matters in connection with this thing. I realise the importance as my colleague realised it, of national housing, and building control will go out of its way to see that national housing is pushed on as fast as possible. I think hon. members will give me credit that I do not hesitate to acknowledge a mistake when one is made, but I hope there will be fewer mistakes in future.

I would like to say a few words on the subject of building control and the issue of permits. I do not want to appear parochial in what I am going to say, but I do want to put up a special plea for Durban in regard to the supply of building material and permits. I would also plead for many other cities if they were placed in the same position as Durban. Everyone knows the great part Durban had to play in regard to the war effort and for that reason there has been far greater influx of population, proportionately, than in any other city, and therefore I think Durban should receive preferential treatment with regard to the issue of permits. I have made this plea before, but as far as I know, the Minister has not conceded to my request. It is well-known by the Minister that there will be a further influx of population into Durban in the near future, if it is not already taking place, owing to conditions which I would not like to mention for security reasons, but the Minister knows very well what I am referring to. That is another reason why I make a special plea for preferential treatment for Durban. I am told that Durban is probably worse off in regard to building permits than any other city.

Whoever told you that is totally incorrect.

I am prepared to accept that but many people in Durban think otherwise. I had put forward a plea that the Minister would give Durban preferential treatment owing to the position it occupied in the war effort. Now I would like to say a few words on the question of fire brigades which the hon. member for Durban (Central) (Mr. Derbyshire) has raised. I think we are indebted to the hon. member for having brought forward this subject, and the disclosure he made is illuminating. I want to put this point before the Minister. There are differential rates in fire insurance between the various centres of the Union, and this differentiation was explained by the insurance companies some years ago, their reason for it being that the pressure of water was less in Durban than in Johannesburg or Cape Town. For that reason the rates paid by insurers in Durban were greater. But now, since the inauguration of the Shongweni water scheme I understand that the pressure in Durban is even better than in other centres, but the rates still remain the same. Now this is not an attack on the insurance companies; far from it. But I do think that this matter should be taken up and I have no other way of approaching the subject except through the Minister. I hope that he will take up this matter with the insurance companies and see whether it cannot be put right, because I believe I am right in saying that the water pressure in Durban is now better than in Johannesburg or Cape Town.

I should like to raise the question of the small builders. The Minister, I am sure, will not take exception to me raising this question because he has invited me to do so by way of letter, and I appreciate that. I want to put the position very plainly. At the outset the Minister ought to know that there is a serious difference between the building control in Johannesburg and the Small Builders’ Association. The hon. Minister referred to the master builders and the speculative builders this morning, and by way of interjection I tried to elicit from him the difference between the two. He has not given me the difference, and I do not think he can; except that he said that the speculative builder built a house and sold it at an enhanced price. But what does the master builder do? He sells at an enhanced price, as the hon. Minister for Welfare and Demobilisation will find when he has to pay those prices. The master builder makes treble the profit the small builder does. I think that the term “speculative builder” is a wrong one and that the correct term is “small builder”. There are three points of difference between the Building Controller and these people, who I may say represent an association of about 400 members who are carrying on business in Johannesburg and along the Reef. The Building Controller wants limitation of profits; that the houses are to be occupied immediately after they have been completed; that there must be a guarantee that no labour will be taken away from Government jobs or master builder jobs. The Builders’ Association, on the other hand take up this attitude—

1. (1) That no speculative permits be issued to non-builders as contemplated by War Measure No 6.
2. (2) The estimated selling price of the house to appear on the permit.
3. (3) Permits to be issued on a quota system to be commensurate with the average number of artisans employed regularly.
4. (4) Advisory control committees to act under a neutral chairman.
5. (5) The Association to be represented on the advisory committee.

In reference to the first point, the Minister may not be aware that there is one matter that should be rectified now. Whilst you have the small builder who has to make a living, you find on the other hand a man holding a fine Government or municipal position who builds a house in his spare time. I do not think it is right to allow that practice and to exclude the genuine man from making his living while allowing the other man to make a double living. In regard to the second point, I ask the Minister whether he can expect anything fairer than that? They say they are prepared to have the estimated price put on the permit and to sell it on that. Can that imply speculation and overcharging? If you find one person out of 300 or 400 people overcharging, can you blame all these builders, and is it fair to take their livelihood from them? I wonder whether the Minister is aware that no permits have been issued to them since January of this year? In regard to the fifth point, the Minister made a big point this morning of his advisory committee. The hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. Van den Berg) said that next year they will have no trade unionists on it.

He is quite wrong.

There is definitely a trade union representative on that committee, but why should the smaller man not also have a say? There is too much of this attempt in this country to kill the small man, though when it comes to taxation he has to carry the country. The small man is not represented on that body, and the master builders are therefore discriminating against him. This is something I also want to tell the Minister. I do not think he appointed that advisory body to discriminate on racial grounds. When a man comes along, to ask him whether he is a Dutchman or whether he is a Jew, and that is being done by this advisory body—I can produce the facts—I do not think that was contemplated by the Minister. The differences between the control and the small builders are very small indeed. I have done my best to bring about a settlement in this dispute and a meeting between Mr. Holgate and these members. They are reasonable people, all of them. They have suggested an impartial chairman, I think the Minister knows the man. As I say, the differences are small, so why not settle the dispute? I am coming to the part these people play in building, and I am glad the Minister of Demobilisation is in the House. Let me assure him at once his proposed national housing plan in South Africa will not solve the housing difficulty ….

That is outside the scope of this vote.

I say that these are the people who will go to a certain type of man the Government cannot cater for and they will build for him. The Government are only catering, and the municipalities are only catering for the man who is paid from £15 to £20 a month, the man who is receiving 10s. to 15s. a day, but not for the middle class, the man who earns £35 to £50 a month, and this is the category in which thousands of our returning soldiers will fall. They will not be catered for. Those are the type of people who want to build on their own initiative. They do not want to be told by the Government how big their kitchens or their other rooms may be; they want to plan their own homes and have them built to their own liking.

That falls under the Minister of Public Health—under the national housing scheme.

Perhaps, Sir, you have not quite followed my contention. My argument is that as control, as it is operating today, is throwing the small builder out of business, it is a serious matter as it is the small builder who will be called upon in the near future to solve an important housing problem. Am I in order, Sir, in arguing on these lines?

As long as the hon. member criticises building control as such.

I am trying to point out the fact that these are the people who will be called upon to solve a very difficult problem. This dispute that is existing at the moment ….

I am going into that position in Johannesburg next week.

I am glad to hear that from the Minister. May I put this question? On his return from Johannesburg will he make a statement in this House on that matter?

I will give the hon. member the information, and he can make what use he likes of it.

I sincerely hope that matter will be settled. There is another point. If the Minister thinks—I do not blame him— that returned soldiers are getting preference or that their applications are being expedited, he is sadly mistaken. I have here a letter of appeal from a returned soldier asking that something may be done so that his application will be attended to. Those are the little pin pricks that are making the public disgusted with control. These small things can easily be rectified, and I sincerely hope that the Minister, when he is in Johannesburg, will succeed in effecting a complete overhaul in that office.

I shall not talk about control; I think we have already heard enough about control, and that the Minister will realise there is something wrong and that he will have to plan for an improvement. The matter that is worrying me is that six months after the war control will lapse. Has his department endeavoured to find something to substitute for it? Remember there is a shortage of material; some people have it but others have not; and because there is a shortage the price will rise dreadfully after control has been lifted. Wealthy people will be in a position to buy material, but poor people who desire to build small dwellings will not be able to get material. I had thought the Minister’s department would have endeavoured to ensure that, in one way or another, after control is lifted provision would be made for seeing that the prices are kept to a reasonable figure for a period after the passing of control. If nothing is done we shall have a state of chaos. I think therefore that legislation is necessary to safeguard against that. I should like to know from the Minister whether he has reflected on this matter at all. There is another point I wish to raise. It is this, and it is a point I have mentioned before; the Government must make plans for providing housing for its employees. Not only in the towns but in the smallest villages there is a shortage of houses. I can tell him for example of a village, not more than 120 miles from here, to which a year or so ago a new assistant magistrate was appointed. He has a wife and two children, and he went there with his family and a coloured maid. He thought he would be able to get the house that was occupied by the assistant magistrate who had left.

Is that Robertson?

Yes. But when he arrived there he found there had been so many people after the house that it had already been let and he had to go to an hotel. An assistant magistrate’s salary is not very large, and it was impossible for him to reside in the hotel with his wife and family. The result was he had to send his wife and family back while he remained in the hotel. After his arrival an excise officer came, also a married man, and he too had to stay in the hotel until eventually he got a wooden house outside the village. That was the only dwelling place he could find. What I am mentioning here is occurring everywhere. I think the time has come for the Government to make provision for the housing of officials who are located in the villages. The Government will not suffer any losses because it is assured of the rent. It will be a paying business, because the officials will pay rent as they are doing today and the State will lose nothing. The Minister ought to make a plan to build houses for these people. I think it is time the Government investigated the matter. Then there is another point I should like to mention. It is very difficult for us who are strangers in Pretoria to find the various; Government offices there. One Minister is at the Palace of Justice, another in the Union Buildings, while a third department you will find in a kitchen and another department in some other place. The departments are spread all over the town.

The departments have grown tremendously.

Then it is the duty of the Minister to make provision. You have to search frantically to find a department. I wanted to interview the Meat Controller. No one could tell me where he was. Later on I found the place. It seemed to me it had been a kitchcen in a private home; the clerks were at work there. The Government should one way or another be able to provide decent offices. If there are no offices they should be built. Now I want to put the further question to the Minister whether some plan cannot be devised so that when poor people wish to build a house they will not need to pay high fees to an architect. A poor man makes an application to build. He is told he must send in a plan of the house, that he must go to an architect to draw up a plan. He has to pay for that. The poor man who may have the material, and who is able to build a house for £700 or £750, will be absolutely disheartened by the time he is finished with all the fees and all the forms. He does not know what articles are controlled, and consequently when he wants to build a house he has to come to Cape Town and see the Assistant Controller, and the controllers are not always very polite. The old fellow who wants to build a house comes along and he feels rather bad about it. Is it not possible to have a simpler form of plan for that class of man? He himself could probably make a drawing of the ground floor and say what material is required. Cannot there be some simpler form? All the plans have to be submitted in duplicate.

All that is necessary is a sketch plan indicating the size.

No, they ask for a plan drawn up by an architect. He has to engage someone to do the job. A simple form and a sketch are not accepted. I know the difficulties that may arise, but they can give the information. When a man begins to build he must know that the material is obtainable. Some people have to manage without locks, and they simply use latches. But still they are able to build their own house and they can attend to these matters when the articles are again available. I therefore ask the Minister whether it is not possible to draw up a simpler form of application.

I want to add my quota to the expressions of dissatisfaction regarding building control in Johannesburg. I have before me a case of a certain person who had a permit for a single storey garage, but instead of that he has built a double one, and no action has been taken in the matter.

Let me have his name and he will be prosecuted tomorrow.

I have another case where an individual was given a permit for certain material, and it was greatly exceeded. The permit was in respect of 270 sq. ft. of glass and the actual amount used on the house was 465 ft. He was allowed eleven doors and he has actually used sixteen. Yet no action whatsoever was taken in this case. He was simply allowed to do what he liked. Then I have another case which is even worse. Here is an individual who actually builds a house without a permit, and no action is taken.

Give me particular’s of this case and a prosecution will take place tomorrow.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote No. 26.—“Public Health”, £1,560,000,

Mr. Chairman, I would like to avail myself of the half-hour privilege in order that I may review briefly the events in connection with the planning for future National Health Services which have occurred during the period since the debate on that subject took place in this House during February. Hon. members will remember that, prior to that debate, the official attitude towards the “Health Plan” of the National Health Services Commission was that as defined in the statement by the Hon. the Prime Minister, published on October 9th, 1944. The policy outlined therein was to the effect that “in the field of personal health services the demarcation between the Union and the provinces should generally follow the existing practice and be based on the consideration whether or not the services are performed inside or outside an institution. The provinces would then provide general hospital services, including out-patient facilities directly connected with such services, while the Union Government would provide extra-institutional health services…. The extra-institutional field would be left to the Union Government, and it would proceed to occupy it by the development of the system of health centres…. The functions of the health centres would include such functions as—

1. (1) Medical advice and treatment of the out-patient and casualty type.
2. (2) Services such as are at present provided by district surgeons.
3. (3) District nursing services.
4. (4) Health education work.
5. (5) Dental services other than hospitalisation.
6. (6) Maternity other than hospitalisation and child welfare services; and
7. (7) Certain specialist services, for example, ophthalmology and the like, and possibly the medical inspection of schools”.

Summarised, using the words of the statement itself, the position was that “health centres would be a large-scale extension of the District Surgeon System”. That statement, however, did not advance the position with regard to our existing health services in the country very much further. Implied in it were potential sources of friction as between the central authority and other public authorities, professional organisations and voluntary agencies on many points which had not been demarcated. It left unsolved the problem of the multiplicity of authorities, and perpetuated the tendency for services to overlap and created public confusion to an extent greater than had existed hitherto. It also perpetuated the “means test”; for a distinction was drawn in the statement between the “sick poor”, “those who can afford to pay something” and those “who can afford to pay”. Under such a financial arrangement the contemplated Health Centre Service was in danger of becoming stigmatised as a “Pauper or Charity” service with the continuance of pauper “certification” and attendant embarrassments. Further the idea of imposing a sliding scale of fees for those who could afford to pay something raised issues of major principle with the medical and allied professions. Because of that position this House was asked on February 6th of this year to consider the motion which urged the Government to introduce the necessary legislative, administrative and financial measures which would ensure adequate personal health services for all sections of the people of the Union of South Africa. In the course of the debate on that motion, the hon. the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation, speaking on behalf of the Government, made the following announcement—

This announcement, Mr. Chairman marked a notable and encouraging advance on the Government’s attitude in connection with the future of national health services as defined by it in its statement of October 9th, for it accepted in principle the bringing into being of a nationally organised health service for this country. In one important respect did the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation re-affirm the Government’s previous decision, namely in respect of the constitutional position as affecting the control of general hospitals. That decision has since been further confirmed by the hon. the Minister of Finance in his Budget proposals as affecting central-provincial financial relations. At this stage, Mr. Chairman, it is necessary to remove a misconception which exists in certain quarters. It will be remembered that there was a minority as well as a majority report from the National Health. Services Commission. The former was signed by two and the latter by eight members of the commission. The curious idea has arisen that, because the Government has not removed hospitals from provincial control, it is following the recommendations of the minority report. It is important to defend the two signatories to the minority report against those who are under the delusion that the minority report supports the perpetuation of the arrangement whereby the Provinces control hospitals and the Central Government the remaining health services. All members of the commission, including those who signed the minority report, were agreed that all personal health services, i.e. hospitals and medical services outside hospitals, should be unified, and vested in a national health authority especially established. Where those who signed the minority report differed from the majority, was in the following regard. The majority report recommended that the executive responsibility for all personal health services be vested in the Central Government. On the other hand, those who signed the minority report recommended that the Provinces be given not only the continued control of hospitals, but the administrative responsibility for the entire range of personal health services— both institutional and extra-institutional, leaving the Central Government with nothing to do but to produce blue-prints to be handed to the Provinces for fulfilment, and the job of collecting most if not all the finance necessary to pay for what in effect would have been four Provincial health services. The Government, by its statement of 9-10-’44, and the recent Budget speech, has clearly rejected both the financial and the administrative proposals of the minority report. It is true that it has not brought about and does not intend to bring about, the transfer from provincial to central control of these hospitals which have always been under provincial control, and to that extent it has not carried out the recommendations of the majority report either; but it has affirmed that not merely the control of, but executive provision for, all other health services is and will remain a function of the Central Government. It would be entirely erroneous to suppose that these “other” health services represent merely a residuum. Hospitals loom far too large in the public mind as representative symbols of health services. Moreover, not all hospitals fall under provincial control, nor ever will. The Central Government itself provides or controls all the mental hospitals, the T.B. hospitals, the V.D. hospitals, and some I.D. hospitals; and will continue to do so. Except in Natal, the Central Government prescribed the standards for and inspects all private hospitals, including those which the central Legislature has compelled employers to provide for mine natives—a large and important class of hospitals. This will also continue. The Central Government also administers the medical provisions of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, administers the district surgeon system of medical poor relief, and supervises and subsidises the great majority of district nursing services. It has its own laboratories for controlling the purity of drugs, for preparing vaccines, and for providing diagnostic services for inter alia many provincial hospitals. And all these extra-institutional services are also, in terms of the Government statement of 9-10-’44, to remain with the Central Government and to undergo considerable expansion. In spite of the above considerations, however, the Government’s decision to leave hospital control with the Provinces, whilst it may have avoided a constitutional difficulty, has undoubtedly increased the formidable task of achieving the effective plan for the meeting of national health needs. It has enhanced those problems which can only be effectively solved on the national plane, and for all of which hospital services have a vital part to play. It has diminished the possibility of the Provinces fulfiling the rôle of active and effective ministeries of local government. Moreover, it has created a new position affecting the medical and allied professions which will have to be carefully re-examined. The medical professions, as has already been indicated to this House, accepted the recommendations of the majority report, but we do not at present know its attitude in connection with the position as it has arisen in view of the Government’s decision. These, Mr. Chairman, were the issues which confronted those of us who had devoted our energies towards the elaboration of the plan which would ensure adequate health services for the people of this country. We were confronted with one of two alternatives. The first was, the Government not having agreed to implement in full the recommendations of the Report, were we therefore to refuse to co-operate further? The second alternative was, were we to accept the Government’s decision with regard to the continued provincial control of general hospitals and assist in implementing those parts of the Report which were acceptable to the Government? After the most profound meditation, I personally came to the conclusion that it was my duty to offer whatever assistance I could render, if by so doing I might usefully serve national interests and in some measure assist in advancing the well-being of the people of this country. I accordingly accepted the Government’s invitation to preside over the various bodies which it has created in order to give effect to its policy. It has, I believe, been suggested that I, who headed the signatures of the majority report, am guilty of disloyalty to the majority of my colleagues as well as to my own convictions in having arrived at that decision. Well, Sir, the future only can tell whether I have erred in judgment. I trust, however, that I may claim the credit for good faith. My concern today, Mr. Chairman, is to clear the confusion as to general principles rather than to vindicate my own position. It is, however, a matter of more than purely personal consequence that the bona fides of one of its members, called upon to fill a key position with regard to the development of one of the great social services, should not be in any doubt either in the House or in the country. The problems which now confront us are both varied and difficult. Fundamental to them are technical and administrative principles, which must be determined and decided before action can be taken in regard to the future. The position with regard to hospital services now seems clear, so I shall deal with it first. There seems every likelihood that in the future essential services in the provincially controlled hospitals will be free to all in-patients. The hon. the Minister will probably deal with Government policy as affecting those hospitals which are controlled by the central Government. This position is thus in accord with what I have already described as the major recommendation of the Report—that health services should be made available according to needs instead of means. But, in addition to this important development on the financial side, there has been another on the administrative side. Once it was realised that complete unification of all personal health services was not possible, it became essential to create machinery which would ensure the next best thing, namely co-ordination. Accordingly, at a meeting which the hon. the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation had with a sub-committee of the Inter-Provincial Consultative Committee, it was decided to set up a Central Health Services and Hospital Co-ordinating Council, with the following functions—

1. (a) conditions of service and salaries of all staff connnected with these services; and
2. (b) the training of personnel for these services.

The Council will address itself within the scope of its functions to such matters as may be referred to it by the Central Government or the Provinces.

The Council consists of a representative of each of the four Provincial Administrations, together with four nominees of the Central Government, the Chairman to be appointed by the Central Government froth amongst its nominees. It was agreed that both through the medium of this body, as well as through ordinary administrative channels, there should be continuous contact and exchange of information between the Government and the provinces as well as between various provinces on the subject of all matters of mutual interest. This is something new in the history of the administration of health services in this country. There have already been two meetings of the Council, of which I have the honour to be the. Chairman, and at both meetings, there has been manifest not only a spirit of co-operation but also a realistic appreciation of the grave problems which face both the provinces and the Government as they seek to develop their respective hospital services. I refer of course to the acute shortage of nurses throughout the Union. I may remind you that the Health Report repeatedly stressed the fact that the limiting factor in the development of health services generally was more likely to be lack of technical personnel than the lack of funds or even of buildings. This is certainly so in regard to hospital services; and therefore it is a matter for gratification and hopefulness that, instead of each province and the Government considering its difficulties and requirements in regard to nurses independently of the others, with possible competition and conflict of policies,—instead of this, a single Council on which all were represented, considered over-all national requirements and solutions on a national plane. The Council as a whole met with representatives of the newly established Nursing Council to consider this very problem. The latter Council controls the content and standards of training itself, whilst the hospitals provide the actual training facilities, so that all the parties which can contribute to a solution of this great problem have already met and can meet again, making use of the permanent machinery of the Co-ordinating Council. I say again such a meeting could not have taken place even six months ago, for there was no common meeting ground. At its last meeting, it resolved that—

I come now to the more complicated problem relating to extra-institutional services. It will be remembered that in his reply to the debate, the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation inter alia stated that “the Government has decided that in order to assist it in its task of building up this National Health Service which is contemplated, and which the country wants it is going to establish a body, … which can at once advise the Government the steps to be taken in the development of the National Health Services scheme, and which can render to the Government such assistance as it calls for in the execution of such steps. That body will be called into being at once….” True to his promise, the Minister has appointed this committee. It is known as the National Health Services Advisory Committee, and it reports directly to the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation, and thus has an independent status. It is not, as has been mistaken in some quarters, another fact-finding committee or commission. Ik is a committee of action. Its object is to recommend to the Government the various steps which are to be taken in order to bring into being an organised health service. I may also mention that at least two members of this committee are also Government representatives on the Hospital Co-ordinating Council, so that there is assurance of co-ordination between the planning for the extra-hospital and for intra-hospital health services. It has been the business of this body of which also I have the honour to be chairman, to give detailed attention to the principles involved and to offer to the Minister advice as to practical steps in conformity with those principles. It has had two meetings, and as the result has submitted to the Government its views in connection with those issues on which the Government decisions are essential, before further steps can be taken in connection with the organisation of the health service. Amongst its submissions to date are those which deal with the provision of training facilities for personnel, with the nationalisation of certain services, with the general steps which are necessary for the creation of the central, regional and peripheral units of administration as elaborated in the report. Amongst its most important submissions is a memorandum setting out the various alternatives which must be considered by the Government with regard to its financial and administrative responsibility in connection with the extra-institutional health services. These comprise health centre services, preventive and curative, and also those services which will be linked with the health centres. I am grateful to the committee for its patient hearing. I felt that it was necessary to make this statement in order not only to acquaint hon. members of recent events, but also to make clear the position of those of us who have thrown in our lot with the future plan. The report of the National Health Services Commission describes the scheme which we considered and still consider the one most likely to ensure adequate health services for the people of this country. We haye, however, accepted the Government’s decision with regard to the continued provincial control of general hospitals, and in my capacity as chairman of the several bodies concerned with the health plans of the future I shall loyally abide by that decision and endeavour to give of my best in order to ascertain how near the ideal we can reach with a scheme which shall be “within the framework of the constitution”. The future rests with us all; with the Central Government in the sincerity with which it proposes to approach the big health tasks which lie ahead; with the provinces in the spirit with which they propose to co-operate, and whilst giving effect to their provincial responsibilities, heed their greater national responsibilities; with the professional organisations in their reactions to the scheme as it must develop under the divided control—institutional services under the provinces, and the rest under the Central Government—and, of course, with the National Health Services Advisory Committee, in the manner with which it discharges the grave responsibilities of advising the Government on the various steps to be taken.

I want at once to make it clear that as far as I am concerned I find nothing amiss in the hon. member who has just spoken having taken his place on this advisory committee, and in trying to save what remains to be saved out of the proposed great national health scheme that was recommended by his commission. I do not take the slightest exception to that. I want to make that absolutely clear at the outset, because I myself have stated in this House during a previous debate that in so far as it is in our power we shall, in every respect, at least assist to effect an improvement in the condition of national health and I am convinced that certain improvements can be effected. But I cannot omit to make it clear to this House and to the great public outside, throughout the country, that as the result of the action of the Government the projected scheme of the National Health Services Commission has suffered shipwreck in respect of one essential feature. Let me then begin by touching on a few of the things on which the hon. member opposite spoke, in the first place the question of hospitalisation. I want first of all to refer to the start that has been made by the Minister in instituting certain health centres. Last year the Minister placed £50,000 on the estimates, and absolutely no use was made of it, for various reasons which we shall leave for the moment. This year provision is made on the estimates for £100,000 for the establishment of certain health centres. It is not quite clear to me whether a portion of this money will be employed for capital expenditure. I assume that it is all expenditure in connection with health centres. Now it may be possible that in the course of the year the Minister will organise five, six or seven centres. I am convinced that we will go on in this way for the next 20 years, and then we shall only have made provision for the indigent section of the’ community, for that section who are entirely without means, the people who are absolutely too poor to pay for any medical services. In other words the remainder of the community, especially that considerable middle class who have the greatest difficulty in paying for medical services, will be asked at these centres what their income is, how much they can afford to pay; and there will be incessant difficulties about what these people can pay and what they should pay. We shall have to use a considerable part of the funds of the health centre to remunerate a person who will have to enquire which persons can pay, and what they should pay. That is a serious side of this matter, but there is a still more serious side that the hon. member on the opposite benches has not touched on, and that affects the standpoint of the medical profession. The medical profession was willing, and indicated its willingness, to go in for a scheme in which 1,000 to 2,000 doctors, with nurses and other staff would be engaged in connection with such centres or in such a scheme. They were prepared to participate in such a service in which about 1,000 doctors would be employed, because then there would have been an opportunity for the doctors to spend the whole of their professional life in that service and they could improve their professional attainments. The individual doctor would have gone in for it, because he would have felt that he was dealing with a great concern, and that he was engaged in rendering the whole community health services which would be of benefit to the country as a whole, a health service which stood on its own feet and on which was reared the structure of social security. What is happening now? Every year ten, twenty, thirty or fifty doctors will be appointed, or we shall endeavour to appoint them at certain centres which in the first instance will be entirely unrelated to each other. We do not know what salaries will be paid. Let us assume the Minister will accept the scale of salaries recommended by the commission. If so, who will enter this service? Will he attract the best representatives of the medical profession? Most certainly not. They would have come in if there was a complete service for the population so that the doctor would be able to devote the whole of his professional life to the service. Today the Minister will find it is the young people who will go in for it, men who cannot find another post or who feel that they are not able to start a private practice, or else the superannuated section of the profession—perhaps I shall apply myself.

A sort of old age pension.

Yes, to do a little work there. It is a very ominous position. The first essential of the scheme was that the medical profession should have been willing to have identified themselves with it as a body, or at least as to 80 per cent., and my feeling was that the profession was prepared to participate in the scheme eventually in respect of 80 per cent. of their members. Because it has come to grief I regard it as such a serious matter that I have grave doubts—I expressed myself more strongly on another occasion—I fear that the scheme itself contains the germ of failure. My hon. friend on the other side is endeavouring to salvage what he can salvage, and accordingly I want to put it to him and to the Minister that the matter is so serious that it may signify failure of the whole scheme for health centres. It can mean that. Accordingly, we must now ask ourselves, and the public have to ask themselves, whether we have now to begin with a new campaign right through South Africa to bring the people to the pitch that they will be prepared for something big. It has taken us 20 years to awaken and arouse public opinion to the point that we finally obtained a commission such as the National Health Services Commission. Shall we now have to start afresh to see how the Government can manage to create a living scheme bearing the germ of success. I am afraid that is the position. We shall have to begin afresh to try to stir up the public conscience so that we may again approach the Government to get it to the point of embarking on a grand scheme. I should like to read out a few observations from a paper written by a sociologist. It is very comprehensive and it expresses a clear opinion on the report of the National Health Services Commission, and also on the complications that have occurred since the report appeared right up till yesterday. The information the hon. member has furnished us with today has of course not been brought within its scope because the writer naturally did not have it at his disposal. He asks what the policy of the present Government is and then he writes—

But it is not all an amplified exposition of a single continuous policy. It is unfortunately not the single continuous policy that has been proposed by the Commission of Enquiry. The writer also brought into his discourse a quotation from the “Forum” to indicate what impression the Prime Minister’s statement created on the Press itself, an impression that was misleading. He writes as follows—

It is peculiar that the Press itself was under this misapprehension when the Government represented that there really was a continuous policy on the lines recommended by the Commission of Enquiry in the statement of the Prime Minister and the statement of the Minister of Welfare and Demobilisation. The writer states further that under the present system the whole financial system has been left in the air. We do not know what and how much the Provinces should contribute and how much the Government will have to contribute. The work has been divided between the Provinces and the Central Government. The hon. member opposite has endeavoured to show that they are trying to obtain co-ordination by appointing committees. But for the very reason that those committees did not succeed, they had to try to obtain co-ordination by establishing a considerable number of fresh committees. [Time limit.]

There is one point under this vote that I should like to discuss now, and when I commence with it I hope this House will realise I am not launching an attack on the medical profession. But there are circumstances prevailing in the country today of which the House should take cognisance. I am referring to the circumstances in which the public now find themselves. In my opinion the time has arrived when stability should be created in regard to certain conditions in which various medical practitioners do their work, particularly with reference to fees and charges they demand for certain classes of work. I do not think there can be any doubt in the mind of any person in the House, or outside it, that there are instances where the public are the victims of extortion by these doctors. We cannot describe it in any other way. There are cases where fees are demanded by certain medical people which in our opinion cannot be regarded otherwise than extortionable. There is no sign of stability or uniformity in connection with the fees chargeable in respect of treatment and operations. If you call in an ordinary doctor, a general practitioner, he asks you so much for an operation and the person who makes the diagnosis also asks a fee for his work. If you consult a specialist he asks two or three times as much as the general practitioner, while the diagnostician demands two or three guineas. I have in mind particularly a case of blood transfusion. I know of an instance where a person had a blood transfusion. We know that blood is donated by the public. I admit there is expense attached to storing the blood at a certain temperature and in keeping it pure, but I know of an instance where an account was sent for £8 8s. in all for a lb. of blood. The person was asked £5 5s. for that lb. of blood and £3 3s. for professional services. It looks as if there is extortion. It looks as if that blood which is donated by private individuals is being sold at a terrific price. I know of a case where a young lad, an apprentice on the railways, consulted a specialist in Johannesburg. He was told three things were wrong with him. What they were I no longer remember, but he was informed he would have to undergo three operations, that they would cost him £15 each, £45 in all, and that he in each case would have to remain in hospital for five or six days, which means £5 5s. for each occasion. That would have brought the bill up to £60. This person came to me and said: “It is impossible for me to pay this; I am sick, I cannot do my work, but I cannot face this expense”. I went to a personal friend of mine in Benoni. I do not want to mention any other name, but I shall mention this doctor’s name. It was Dr. Dalton. I asked him to examine this lad and to tell me what his actual condition was. Dr. Dalton examined this person and said there were three things that had to be done, but that they could be done in one operation. He said he would do the three operations at the one time for £10 10s. and that the lad would not need to remain longer than five days in the hospital. I asked him whether he would not be involved in a loss by doing the work for £10 10s. and he replied that he would be making a profit. He added that it was not necessary to do three operations. He said he did not blame the medical man whom the lad consulted, but as man to man he told me it was fraud and robbery. The reason I am speaking here today is that I feel the time has arrived when the Government should take into consideration that there is a measure of extortion in respect of certain fees, and that the time has arrived when maximum charges should be laid down in each case, so that the patient, before he consults a doctor, will know the cost entailed in the operation or in respect of the treatment he will receive. I think this is no more than reasonable. I do not ask the House to assume, and I do not want the public to assume that I consider that a man who has obtained his dergree and who has had his expenses in getting that degree, should work at a loss. I maintain that every individual is entitled to a fair profit for the work he does, but I am opposed to there being such a great disparity in the fees as there was in this case. For a person who can afford it the fee is so much, and if another person cannot afford it the fee is less. I maintain that even if you can afford to pay it is no more than right that you should know what you have to pay when you undergo an operation. The time has arrived when the State, and this House too, should take note of the conditions that are prevailing today. The House should consider how many members of the public cannot pay the fees asked for operations, especially among the less privileged section of the people. They have to suffer as a result of this extortionate practice by certain of our doctors. And that system is practised on the public who, as the result of the circumstances in which they are placed, have to be satisfied with paying the fees.

I come next to the resolution to make the provinces responsible for the provision of consulting specialists for out-patients. I must say this is not only not a very happy decision, but it is also a decision which contains the germ of failure; to maintain that the same services to the same patient must be apportioned in respect of the same illness between the Provincial Government and the Central Government is something far-reaching. I cannot imagine what reason there could have been for that, and yet one of the first features we have is that the Government comes and makes a further subdivision for the patient who in respect of the same illness is sent by the general practitioner to the specialist. He will now again have to fall under another authority or section of the Government. I say this is a disastrous thing, and why? It is an important part of the whole work, and I know today that every year that passes complaints will be more and more frequent on account of the provinces not making adequate provision for those specialist services which they say will be connected with the principal hospitals in those areas. It is in my opinion a division of the responsibility, apart from the fact that it is an exceptionally delicate problem; it is to be doubted whether any apportionment will ever be satisfactory. I should just like to read out something more from the paper by a sociologist who expressed his opinion on this matter. He says—

The commission endeavoured to do that—

This is just a commentary on the resolution of the Minister to create so many health centres every year. This is the commentary of a sociologist. I am merely quoting this here to indicate that on the part of the public, on the part of the universities, and on the part of the whole population a lively interest is being taken in the establishment of a real practical national health scheme, and to indicate that I do not believe it can be effected in the present circumstances. I have stated at the outset that I do not resent the hon. member having allowed himself to be appointed to the commission, nor because he allowed himself to be made chairman of that commission. But I would only like to point out to him, just as his colleague on that health commission has done, that his work there will be largely to induce the Government to make a fresh start, and to tackle the matter as we all believe it ought to be tackled, and that is with a new central control and under central management. Dr. Luke, one of the members of the commission, said—

I range myself with Dr. Luke in the hope that it will not break his heart. I should like to quote here what this gentleman also said as some small consolation to the hon. member who sits ever there. He said—

It is quite unnecessary to put it in a more unfavourable light than the facts place it in. The task that Dr. Gluckman has addressed himself to is clearly to ensure that there will be saved what can be saved. He says—

We have had sufficient experience of such committees and of the Government to know that it is a Government that does not find it difficult to say “no”. They say “no” before they are awake in the morning. The position is then that we shall have to set going a new campaign to rescue what can be rescued. We do not take exception to the hon. member trying to rescue what he can, but we shall have to launch a new campaign, and we shall have to try so to strengthen public opinion that we shall really have a health service, under central control and under central direction, that can provide the whole country with the health services required. I am not one who believes you have to begin with millions and more millions and more millions still. I do not mind either if the Minister should begin with a small sum; but it must be on a sound footing and it must be done in such a way that we can continue to build on it. On the system we have now started on we cannot build a sound structure. It is impossible to rear a sound edifice on it, and I think it may be right when I say that if the Minister could have had his own way he would rather have done the right thing and not only accepted the report, but have carried out a number of recommendations in the report in the true spirit in which it was intended. But it was not possible for him to do so. This is and remains a matter that affects public health at the moment in South Africa. It is a burning question not only here but also in Europe, and in every country in the world it will comprise a very important part of their security that we expect to see in the next 10 or 15 years. Consequently we hope that the Minister does not think that public opinion accepts his statements that the Government is adoping the commission’s report. They cannot affirm that they are adopting it as a report. Hospital services rest with the Provinces and are remaining with them. They are dividing the most difficult part of the work still further by also giving it to the Provinces. They continue with the development of the Central Government’s work; that I admit. I shall have something to say on that at a later stage. I do not want to mix that up with the problem of health services. There are still important things that ought to be performed today by a central department, and I shall speak about that on a later occasion. But I hope the Minister will not just agree with us today, but that he will also express the hope that we shall come to another conclusion in the future and establish a real health service in regard to which the whole profession will be unanimous, and in which the central control will be of such a nature that the country may be satisfied with such a health service.

I am sorry I missed the first part of the speech by the hon. member for Yeoville (Dr. Gluckman). He is the chairman of this advisory committee, and I am sorry that I did not hear his explanation of what this advisory committee has succeeded in doing up till now. I did hear him say that they had prepared certain memoranda and had made certain recommendations to co-ordinate the work as between the Public Health Department and the Provinces. What I think is required by this House and what I think is required by the public outside, is that the Minister should issue a White Paper and make it clear to the public and to the whole of South Africa where exactly we stand in our health problems today, what exactly the Government is doing and what they are further prepared to do in view of the recommendations of the Health Commission. So far we have not had a clear cut statement. There is one interesting fact that comes out of this, and that is that in the Provincial Administration Vote there is an extra sum of over £5,000,000, and the Minister of Finance assured me when I spoke on this matter in the Budget debate that a large portion of this amount is earmarked for health purposes for the Provinces. We are all very anxious to know because the Provinces are peculiarly silent on this matter, except in the Transvaal where we are told the Pentz scheme is being put into operation. Here in the Cape Province we have had no word from the provincial administration as to what they intend doing, and the money for the Cape Province alone in the coming year exceeds £1,900,000. That is bigger than the total health vote which is just over £1,500,000. There is no doubt that unless this committee of which the hon. member for Yeoville is the chairman, can bring the Provinces to toe the line, we do not really know what they are going to do with this money that is being voted, and it might very well be carried over. I think we should have a very clear explanation as to what the province is going to do with this extra grant during the coming year. I quite agree with the hon. member for Stellenbosch (Dr. Bremer) when he says that these health centres, if they are going to be started in this place, that place and the other place, are going to cause a little bit of inco-ordination, unless more care is taken to see that the Provincial Administration co-operate and I cannot see that the medical or dental and other professions can possibly co-operate in places where there is a health centre and not a hospital, for the simple reason that if there is a health centre in a place and not a hospital, most of the people are going to flock to the health centre. What is going to become of the medical and allied personnel practising in that place? In other words, unless the whole scheme is closely co-ordinated and very carefully planned in its initiation—and that is the important thing—there is going to be a certain amount of chaos and a great amount of dissatisfacton. I do not want to dwell too much on the question of the report of the National Health Services Commission. We had an opportunity of going into that very closely on a previous occasion. The point I want to bring to the notice of the Minister is this that we have had a report that the tuberculosis position in Durban is becoming very critical. We know that the Cape Peninsula area has been and still is a very bad black spot for tuberculosis, but the reports we have recently had from Durban are very alarming. It is not enough to provide hospital accommodation for these people, and we all know that sufficient hospital accommodation is lacking. The secretary for Public Health himself in evidence before the Commission, said that the requisite number of beds in the country for tuberculosis should be equal the number of deaths in the country from tuberculosis. If that is the case, we in South Africa fall short by I should say, roughly 70 per cent. This is just an estimate. What I want to bring to the notice of the Minister is that it is high time for him to appoint a chief tuberculosis officer for the Union to coordinate all the tuberculosis services right through the Union, and to see that the work in the hospital and that the work under the local authorities is coordinated and is followed through. This is our biggest trouble today in the Cape Province, at any rate, where I have had experience in dealing with tuberculosis. In the larger areas where local authorities have tuberculosis under their care, something is done, not only for the treatment, for the diagnosis, but also for the following up of contacts. But once the contact leaves that local authority into another authority, then for all the world that contact is lost sight of, and there the help of a chief tuberculosis officer will come in, because it is highly necessary that he should work in close contact not only with the Public Health authorities who run the tuberculosis hospital and sanatoria, but also that he should work in close conjunction with the Public Health Departments of the bigger and smaller local authorities. It is not enough to treat tuberculosis. It is not enough to apply remedial measures in tuberculosis; it is important to follow up the contacts, but it is most important of all to co-ordinate the whole plan of combating tuberculosis into one unified system and that is what we lack in South Africa, I would earnestly appeal to the Minister to consider the question of appointing a chief tuberculosis officier in the Public Health Department to co-ordinate all the services, and then I want to ask that he be paid a decent salary. Do not advertise the post at a salary of £850 as you did in the case of health centres. If you want a good man you must pay him a good salary. I go further and say that under him there should be a regional tuberculosis officer for each region to supervise the tuberculosis work in that particular area. I want to make it quite clear that the public is getting alarmed not only at the spread of tuberculosis, and very often they get a totally false impression of its incidence and mortality rates. If laymen see the weekly health statement issued in Cape Town which shows that 55 cases of tuberculosis have been notified during the week and that 39 people have died, they naturally get alarmed. There again I come back to the points that I have raised year after year in this House. Until such time as the Public Health Department has available statistics for all sections of the people of South Africa—and here I am referring particularly to the natives—we will not know where we stand in South Africa as regards tuberculosis and other formidable infectious diseases. But notwithstanding the fact that in the minds of laymen the position is apparently exaggerated, the position is serious enough for action, and some concrete action to combat this system ruling at present. I can say openly in the House that I know that in the city of Cape Town we have cases which have been notified eighteen months ago as suffering from open pulmonary tuberculosis, and even up to today there is no place to isolate those persons. Those cases are still spreading infection. We have early cases that can be treated in a sanatorium in Cape Town. When I was acting tuberculosis officer for this city, I had fifteen cases of early tuberculosis amongst Europeans and non-Europeans, who for lack of hospital accommodation could not be treated in the early stages by artificial Pneumethorax, and some of them had to wait seven months before I could get a hosptial bed for them, by which time the treatment is often futile on account of the fact that the disease has gone too far.

We now have nearly 300 beds available and no nurses.

The Minister says they now have 300 beds available and no nurses. I am reminded of what the hon. member for Yeoville said that they are trying with his committee to arrange for and to co-ordinate the training of specialised personnel for the future health services of this country. There again I want to know this: With this extra grant which is now being given to the provinces, surely they can be prodded into providing extra accommodation for training nurses. In a hospital like Groote Schuur we could take an extra hundred probationers if we had the accommodation for them; and there the committee can serve a useful purpose if it could spur on the provincial administrations to get on with the training of nursing personnel.

I want to leave the medical side for a moment and I hope the medical profession will not mind that. But I think this is in the interests of the medical profession. There really is no doubt that the public asked for a State health service. Seeing it will not be instituted as recommended by the commission, and bearing in mind what is being done by the Government, the people will have to wait many years until provision is made for the needs of the people. If you want to have a healthy nation it is necessary that the people should be provided with medical services of every description, but if you do not know what you have to pay, what then is the position—particularly of the less privileged people? I feel that the time has arrived when medical fees and travelling expenses must be determined in conformity with the services rendered. It is generally known that certain groups such as bank clerks, railway officials, working men, etc. fall under the Workmen’s Compensation’ Act, and in this case a tariff is prescribed giving the fees a doctor may demand when he attends one of these people. And one finds that the fees in such cases are always lower than for other people. Notwithstanding the lower fees, you see that the services are rendered to that section of the public. It may be said there are certain medical services for which the tariff cannot be fixed. Such cases can be submitted to the Medical Council in order to see whether some fee or tariff can be laid down under which the doctor should work. Take the case of injections. You have doctors who if they have to give a patient an injection say that the material is very expensive and consequently it is necessary to ask a high fee. It should be possible, in my opinion, to fix a fee for an injection. You have the cost of the injection plus the cost of the material that is used. I do not think it is right that when a person buys certain material for certain services he should ask an additional amount, because this is a matter affecting the health of the people. When I mention these things I do so because there are other professions that all have fixed tariffs. There are attorneys, surveyors, advocates— the fees of advocates are subject to the approval of the Master of the Supreme Court. These are all professional people whose tariffs of charges are fixed. If you go to these people you know what they can claim from you, but you do not know in the case of a doctor. I do not think that the honest and reasonable doctor will make any objection to the fixing of tariffs. Let there be tariffs for travelling costs, for night services and for ordinary visits to patients. It should be possible to fix these things. I was told by someone—I repeat it just as it was told me, no name was mentioned and I do not know whether it was a doctor in Cape Town, Johannesburg or Natal—that a certain specialist went out to see a patient a distance of 100 miles. I am not certain whether it was 100 miles for the journey out or there and back, but let us say it was 200 miles there and back. He carried out the operation and returned, and this person informed me that the doctor’s fee was £500. He was asked what chance there was of the patient pulling through, and he replied he did not think the patient would pull through. When you work out the travelling costs at 5s. per mile then even for 200 miles it is only £50. Add to that £50 for his absence from his residence, then it is £100. Then I consider that the additional £400 was too much to ask. I do not know who the person is and where he lives, but I mention the case to show something must be done to fix tariffs so that the public will know what can be claimed. I have also been informed of a case of a coloured person, a domestic servant, who receives £2 10s. a month and her keep. Two pounds ten shillings a month is good remuneration on the platteland. The doctor who visited her, though his place is not 500 yards from her room, asked a fee of £1 17s. 6d. I ask what chance the servant would have of calling in a doctor a second time. It is not fair towards these people. When you talk about health services and you want to offer medical services, then at least the fees should be fixed. The people will want to know what they must pay. If your income is £2 10s. a month and the doctor asks 5s. from you or 10s. you will know that you can call in a doctor two or three times more. But when he asks £1 17s. 6d. you can never call him in again. It is already difficult enough for the servant to pay the £1 17s. 6d. I think the medical profession should be placed in the same position as other professions and when I refer to doctors I include dentists. We should do everything in our power to protect the profession of dentistry, but what do we find today? One dentist charges for extracting a number of teeth and providing a denture £35 or £37, while another asks £15. If you say that the £15 one is of no significance he should not be a dentist, but this ought not to be, the one to ask £37 and the other £15. You ought to know on what tariff they are entitled to charge. Now take another point. The ordinary professional man or any other person you have dealings with, sends you a detailéd account. Now it will be said that you can ask this from the doctor. But I want the Minister to take into consideration that when I ask for a detailed account the doctor is usually dissatisfied and he wants to know whether he is overcharging. Why cannot he furnish a detailed account so that I may know what days he visited me and what he did. I think it is only right in the interests of the public and of honest doctors. I discussed the matter one day with members of the Medical Council. Then they said they could not do it, that they had not the power to fix anything of that sort. Is it not possible then for Parliament to give the Medical Council power to be able to fix these things? This would protect themselves and protect the public so that one would know what one has to pay and what they can ask. If today you place an account before the Medical Council and you cannot prove that a gross irregularity has occurred they take no notice of it. What I am asking is in the interests of the public. No State medical service is now being provided, and no free services, and the public ought at least to know what can be charged. Then I want to say something about district surgeons. Does the Minister not know that in all these places —I believe I am right—in the Cape Province there is only one district surgeon for each district. It is impossible for a man to do the work of the whole district and of the town. If he has to treat all the people who should be treated he cannot do it, and many people die or suffer from illness and the doctor cannot come out. They cannot pay, the district is too large for the doctor, and there are many people in the town. Is it not possible to divide the district into two parts? If, for instance, there are six wards let there be a district surgeon for three wards and another district surgeon for the other three wards and cut the town also into two parts. If the Government then does not accept the report of the Health Services Commission to provide free medical services it can at least be said that the district surgeons are there to serve the people. A further point you find is this: I believe that in the Free State and the Transvaal persons are treated free by the district surgeons when their income is much more than is the case in the Cape Province. Can things not be so regulated by the department that throughout the whole country you will know what persons are entitled to free services from the district surgeons.

Free medical services?

Yes, free medical services. [Time limit.]

May I draw the Minister’s attention and that of the Committee to the neglect that is shown in connection with the alarming spread of tuberculosis in this country. Attention is drawn to it by a petition which has been organised by the Anti-Tuberculosis Association in Durban and transmitted to the Acting Prime Minister with 21,322 signatures of European Natal citizens and 5,860 of non-European Natal residents. The position has had some definite attention from a Health Commission that was appointed to examine the health situation in Durban, and that commission had some severe comments to make in regard to the return to their homes of natives suffering from tuberculosis and found to be badly infected in Durban. The commission which was one appointed by the Provincial Administration consisted of Mr. Wadley, chairman, Mr. Boshoff and Mr. H. C. Lugg. They were a standing local Health Commission of the Provincial Council which was sent on special duty to deal with the situation in Durban. They include in their report a paragraph to this effect—

The position in Durban is that as far back as 1932 an association was formed, and it has attracted a European membership of something like 7,000. It is called the Natal Anti-Tuberculosis Association. It certainly has awakened public feeling in Natal in regard to the danger of the scourge. A very informative report has been produced and the association, through its president, Mr. C. E. James, ’a public-spirited and high-minded man, has addressed the Government, has launched propaganda throughout the Province, and has taken an active interest in endeavouring to mitigate the awfulness of this scourge, which is killing a large number of people, both European and non-European, in Natal. I think the deaths have been, as mentioned in one part of this correspondence, in the neighbourhood of four persons a day. The activities of this association have resulted in a response from the Government. A hospital was built, the King George V. Hospital, in the neighbourhood of Durban to deal with cases of tuberculosis. Very much more is needed to be done, and the measures recommended by this association are elaborated in the form of a letter addressed to the Prime Minister and dealing with the various pressing matters that required attention. In short, they recommend a national plan for eradicating tuberculosis in urban and rural areas in the Union of South Africa, and the appeal of the association to the Government continues—

Those of us who have noticed the change that has taken place in the incidence of tuberculosis among natives are very much alarmed at the existing state of affairs and the absence of any effort in the rural areas to cope with the spread of this fell disease. I feel that a grave responsibility rests upon the Department of Public Health. Among other things this association in Durban says—

I think that natives themselves are not sufficiently alive to the danger arising from the spread of this disease. It may be, Sir, in native areas, pure and simple, there is a great deal of confusion in their minds as to what this disease means for the native population. Many of them do not realise it is infectious or communicable at all. In their superstitious way they attribute it to various other causes, to differing causes and very often to the ill-will of people who hate them. They believe in witchcraft very widely, and it is difficult to convince them of the need for remedial measures or isolation of infected persons. But I think a great deal could be done by the employment of suitable people who would go amongst them and convince them of the danger of infection. I know of a population in certain kraals that have been practically wiped out through causes of infection which have been noticed and probably not believed in by the people who one by one have died off. I feel that the Native Affairs Department ought to take up this matter in conjunction with the Public Health Department and regard it as a joint responsibility of those two departments. A great deal of good could be done, and done at once, if a campaign were instituted and right-minded natives enrolled in that campaign under conditions which would not prove a disastrous burden to them. They have a public spirit among themselves which is very praiseworthy, and it only needs to be encouraged for very good and far-reaching results to be attained. I believe implicitly in the will of the natives to save their own race from diseases of this kind, and I feel sure that if a proper appeal were made we should gain tremendous help from that quarter.

There is a point or two I want to raise on this vote. As the House is aware, there is a National Nutrition Council. That National Nutrition Council’s job is only to advise, that is it is an advisory body. It was established with great hopes as an expression of the food consciousness of the country and as an expression of the International Nutrition Council’s recommendations. Unfortunately, being only an advisory body, it suffers from the defect of all advisory bodies inasmuch as it can only recommend. The public, on the other hand, seems to assume that it can not only recommend but that it can actually do things that it has executive power. In fairness to the Nutrition Council then and the country as a whole, I think it would be a good thing if the Minister would enlighten both the House and the country on what has happened to the various recommendations the Nutrition Council has put up from time to time. The Nutrition Council, as the Minister is aware, started under the enormous handicap of having no staff and of having a rather top-heavy kind of organisation and constitution. That top-heavy constitution has been remedied, with the result that it is today a good working body. But very few of its recommendations, as far as one knows, have been acted upon. I might instance the fact that from year to year the Nutrition Council recommended that margarine should be manufactured. Under stress of war conditions we have got to the stage where there is a possibility of margarine being manufactured. But I would like the Minister to find out from his colleague the Minister of Agriculture when this margarine will be produced, more particularly in view of the fact that there is shortly going to be a very serious shortage of butter. Then I remember the Nutrition Council recommended that a Nutrition Bureau should be established which would be a guiding light to the country in all nutrition problems, and this Nutrition Bureau should have adequate quarters and adequate information at its disposal which it could distribute where it was wanted. Though I have the honour to be a member of that council I have-no idea what happened to that recommendation of the Nutrition Council, and perhaps the Minister may enlighten us. Then the Nutrition Council has been pressing, ever since its inception, for a more adequate staff. We felt one of the duties of the Nutrition Council should be to overhaul the diets of Government institutions in the light of modern nutrition knowledge. We still do not know what has happened to that recommendation. I know a nutrition officer was appointed; but one nutrition officer even with an added clerical staff can do very little, and the field is enormous. I want to know what happened to that recommendation to overhaul the diets of Government institutions such, for example, as mental hospitals and old age homes, and that kind of thing. Then it was a strong recommendation of the Nutrition Council that more funds should be provided for nutrition research. What has happened to that recommendation? Again, Sir, though I am a member of the council I must confess I do not know. It was suggested too that the bread we are consuming in this country is lacking in the necessary amount of calcium. It was recommended by the Nutrition Council that research into that deficiency should be carried out. It was suggested again that English bread—(which has only an 80 per cent. extraction and not a 95 per cent. extraction of wheat germ as in this country)—it is claimed this makes not only a more palatable bread but fortified with vitamins as it is in England, it is a very much better bread than ours. Once again I do not know what has happened to that recommendation and whether any research has been carried out along these lines. Another recommendation was a greater utilisation of fish livers. Again, I do not know what has happened to that recommendation. I should like more information, too, in regard to the school feeding scheme. That is one of the achievements the National Nutrition Council has to its credit. It recommended and continued to recommend it, and this was a deciding factor in establishing the school feeding scheme the Government has adopted. But none the less, the Nutrition Council, as far as the public is aware, has had no hand in that, and I would like to know something of the progress of that scheme and whether the Education Department is going to adopt a system of holiday feeding which the Nutrition Council also recommends. I am taking the various recommendations that have come to my mind as I speak, but neither the House nor the country is aware that these recommendations were made by the National Nutrition Council which is a pity. So far as the country is aware it is a moribund body, whereas in fact it is not a moribund body but is doing the job it was constituted to do, namely, to make recommendations to the Government. But I do think that both the House and the country are entitled to know that these representations were made by the Nutrition Council and also what happened to them. Another point is this: I would like to endorse what one of the hon. members said when he spoke of the extraordinary high charges for blood transfusion. I unfortunately am one of those who in the last few months had to make use of blood transfusions. All the country is under the impression that blood is given free, yet for one blood transfusion, which entailed a few minutes’ work by a doctor—then was taken charge of by a nurse in a nursing home, for the most part, the charge rendered was six and a half guineas, and I contend that this fee is out of all proportion to the services rendered by the doctors. In this particular instance, to my knowledge, the doctor was there for perhaps five minutes, and then left the patient to a special nurse. The blood was donated free but the charge was six and a half guineas. Again I would like to echo the appeal of the hon. member for Graaff-Reinet (Mr. G. P. Steyn) that the Medical Council should consider the fees charged by doctors. By that I do not mean the ordinary practitioner, but the ancillary services necessary in diagnosis. There are more and more ancillary services necessary to get a full diagnostic picture of the condition of the patient. For X-raw services extraordinary high fees are charged, anything from three to 15 guineas and more. [Time limit.]

When my time was up on the previous occasion I was discussing with the Minister the position of district surgeons. In the first place I should like to point out district surgeons have such large districts to cover that they have more work than they can carry out. What I would particularly like to invite the Minister’s attention to is this. Who are the people who can get free medical treatment from the district surgeons? Here in the Cape Province the position is that the majority of the magistrates take up the attitude that when a person is in employment he is not entitled to free treatment by the district surgeon. Take a domestic servant who is in receipt of £2 a month and her keep, which is good pay on the platteland for that sort of work. Should she go to a doctor she is told that as she is in employment she must pay. How is such a person able to pay £1 or £1 10s. We can quite understand such a person will not consult a doctor; she has simply to die. I am speaking now of course of coloured servants. I have been told that the attitude in the Free State is that a person with an income of £6 a month is entitled to free medical attention by the district surgeon. Now, I should like the Minister to tell me what the remuneration is for district surgeons in the Cape Province, the Free State, the Transvaal and in Natal respectively. In the second place I should like to know how it is that a person can obtain free medical services in the Free State when they cannot get it here; in other words, I want to know what expense the Government is involved in in respect of free medical services in the four provinces. I have no objection to people in the Free State and the other provinces getting free medical services. I consider that they are entitled to it if they cannot pay. We have to maintain the health of the people. But if people in one province can get free medical services from the district surgeon when they are in receipt of £6 a month the same should apply in the Cape Province. These are things we feel should be done if we want to preserve the health of the nation. Either one course or the other should be followed in respect of the people, and it is the duty of the State to provide that treatment through the district surgeons. Then there is another matter that I should like to mention in reference to the following telegram that I received from Aberdeen—

The whole day long we talk about public health and say that something should be done to safeguard the people. But as the hon. member for Yeoville (Dr. Gluckman) and other hon. members on the opposite benches have stated, we allow people with tuberculosis to roam around in the country. The Government must find the funds. It finds money for the war; then it is not a question of whether it is thousands or millions. Here where we are making war against disease the Government should also find the money to relieve this regrettable situation. It is sad to see people suffering from tuberculosis, how they simply waste away, and nothing is done for them. When application is made to Nelspoort the applicant has to remain six or seven months on the waiting list, and the man is in his coffin before he can be admitted to Nelspoort. Is it not possible for the Government to do something? On the platteland and throughout the whole country it is felt that some measures must be taken to arrest the spread of tuberculosis in the country. Then there is the question of venereal disease. I have said it previously in this House and I want to repeat, there are domestic servants looking after our children who are suffering from these diseases. No matter whether they, are natives, coloureds or Europeans nothing is done for those who are suffering. They have complete liberty of movement. No obligation rests on them to be examined and to undergo a course of treatment. We should give them treatment and during that period they should not work so that we may be able to determine what their condition is. I am in favour of free medical services, specially as affecting the coloured community and people who have not sufficient money. We should look after these people, especially in regard to these diseases that they carry into our homes, with the result that we and our children may have to suffer. I think the Minister will agree with me that if we want to have a healthy nation we shall have to ensure medical treatment for these people, especially in connection with those contagious or infectious diseases. I hope the Minister will direct his attention to this matter.

Although when the resolution of the National Health Services Commission was before this House I was in conflict with the majority report, since then the relationship of the Provincial Councils to the National Health Organisation has been clarified and I am now anxious to see the implementation of the recommendation of the report done as expeditiously as possible. In that connection I feel the matter centering around contagious diseases is a matter of extreme urgency in this country, and I particularly wish to deal with tuberculosis, which has been emphasised by the hon. member for Rondebosch (Dr. Moll) and also mentioned in relation to the Natal Tuberculosis Association’s plea by the hon. member for Pinetown (Mr. Marwick). One must appreciate the extent of the disease to realise its significance in relation to the community and the need for providing adequate treatment at an early stage. The Natal Anti-Tuberculosis Association, a body which consists of various public-spirited citizens, has been endeavouring to combat this disease for many years, but they find themselves in a difficulty, which concerns the inadequate hospitalisation for the many moribund cases of tuberculosis in Natal. This constitutes a grave menace, due to inadequate institutional treatment, not only to the health of the non-European but also to that of the European. In relation to the nonEuropean, especially the African, these men, not under adequate control, travel from the urban to the rural areas in a diseased and contagious condition and infect others in the territories and so make further contacts. The hon. member for Rondebosch stressed that action was necessary, and action is necessary to provide adequate attention for these cases. I put before the Minister the plea and urge him sympathetically to accept that plea, because it is a plea which merits his sympathetic consideration, namely the request of the Natal Anti-Tuberculosis Association for a grant of £80,000. This plea is backed by a petition of over 21,000 signatures, which indicates that the weight of public opinion in Natal is behind the association. They require £80,000 as a grant for hospitalisation to the extent of £60,000. The hon. Minister referred to the difficulty of obtaining nurses to administer the tuberculosis hospital, and they require therefore the additional amount of £20,000 so that they can create facilities for training nurses. I do feel, and I would urge the Minister to give sympathetic consideration to the request. There is one institution in Natal which provides for Asiatics suffering from tuberculosis, the Friends of the Sick Association, known by the short title “F.O.S.A.” They are hampered by lack of supplies. The Provincial Administration gave them a grant of £1,250 and the Indian Immigration Department also the same amount and they are anxious that the Government should subsidise them because they can expand, and their expansion, based on sound estimates, means that they can provide hospitalisation at a very low figure compared with the price per bed today. In view of this I feel that financial assistance should be given to both these organisations. I will go a step further. It has seemed strange to me that a hospital such as Springfield with 1,500 beds, adjacent to the King George V Hospital, has not been used for the absorption of tubercular cases in Natal. I state that because in Maritzburg, at the Imperial Military Hospital, you have a large institution with 2,250 beds, and I am sure by arrangement, especially in the present stage of the war with the Imperial military authorities, the European military cases could be transferred to Oribi and Springfield should be utilised for the absorption of the many tuberculosis cases prevalent in Natal. One other point I would like to stress is in connection with native tuberculosis. The hon. member touched upon this but it cannot be overemphasised that there is much superstition prevalent in the reserves in Natal amongst natives. They do not understand how tuberculosis occurs. We know that it is a disease of poverty resulting from under-nourishment, bad housing and being ill-clad. But the natives are under the impression that this disease is due to the Umtakati, the devil. I mention this because it has a psychological importance, shown by the fact that the native has no unbounded confidence in the efficacy of the European doctor at present. I have had personal experience. One finds that the educated native, if he feels ill, goes to a European doctor, but when the illness becomes acute and his temperature rises he immediately becomes panicky and reverts back to the primitive and calls in the Nyanga or native doctor. I feel it is important that the Department of Public Health, and the National Advisory Council, should consider means of training an adequate number of Bantu doctors to serve the needs of these superstitious people in the reserves in order that by this means “superstition” may be broken down in the interests of a sound national health plan. I cannot overemphasise this point. I speak from personal experience and knowledge of the psychology of the native in relation to disease, and I would emphasise it once more and it upon the Minister to consider in connection with his health centres that he should appoint men who have knowledge of Bantu psychology and that he should train an adequate number of Bantu doctors to serve the needs of this ignorant section of the community. One other point I would like to emphasise in connection with the national health plan, is the importance of propaganda. I know on the estimates an amount of £5,000 has been set aside for the Red Cross to distribute national health propaganda. This has been done through films to some extent, but I think more largely through the medium of posters. I feel that the film is the soundest medium for the dissemination of knowledge and should be utilised to its fullest extent. In that connection one would like to see other organisations formed, so that the activities of the film health propaganda may permeate the length and breadth of South Africa and bring home visibly to the ignorant section of the population the dangers of disease and to educate them in sound personal hygiene methods. I would like to stress this. I am not so concerned with curative medicine or with palliative measures in connection with national health, but I feel that we must get down to radical measures, and there we have to appreciate the conditions which bring about disease. [Time limit.]

I should like to deal with the report of the Department of Social Welfare, but I wonder whether the Minister would not at this stage accept a motion for the adjournment.

Why did you take so long to ask for it?

Then I move—

House Resumed:

The CHAIRMAN reported progress and asked leave to sit again; House to resume in Committee on 3rd May.