Road builders want work

Roading contractors say they are looking for work and want the Government to start spending the $500 million it set aside for highway building.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen announced before the election the big tax windfall would go into roading, and most of it has been allocated for work in Auckland, Waikato and Wellington.

That was welcomed by the construction industry at the time, but now the Contractors' Federation says it is being drip-fed too slowly.

Federation chief executive Richard Michael said yesterday there were contractors around the country with spare capacity.

"If the industry is under-utilised, then inevitably those skilled workers will move to sectors of the economy where they have a better future," he said on National Radio.

Once gone, they are hard skills to retrieve, he said.

- NZPA