August 16, 2013
Government blamed for coal job cuts
Labour leader David Shearer says the Government has mismanaged Solid Energy.
The state coal miner yesterday chopped another 93 workers from its Huntly East mine, taking it to more than 700 the number of jobs lost since February.
The news has been a blow to Huntly’s Māori community which has a long association with the mine.
Mr Shearer says it was avoidable.
"They keep on blaming the coal price but the coal price today in not much different to what it was five years ago. Solid Energy has over-extended itself. The Government was supposed to oversee Solid Energy and keep an eye on it, but it extracted too much profit from it rather than keeping it healthy, so now it is a company with a $400 million debt and it is shedding workers and it is the workers who suffer for the incompetence of both the management and the Government," he says.
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