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Local scholarship winner gets on-the-job experience

December 23, 2003

A college student who won a study scholarship from North Shore City Council is now on the job and learning about stormwater systems engineering at first hand.

Tahauariki (Tahau) Thompson, a sixth former at Hato Petera College in Northcote, won the city's first-ever three-year scholarship for tertiary study, and has now joined the council as a student worker and will work for the city each school and university holiday. He started with the city at the beginning of December and will return to college in 2004.

Tahau has indicated that his future studies are likely to be in the areas of engineering or planning.

These are all relevant for the council's network consents project that is seeking resource consents for the operation, maintenance and upgrading of the stormwater and wastewater networks.

Resource consents co-ordinator Pete Thomas of North Shore City Council's water services division has taken Tahau "under his wing" and Tahau is now swotting up on the intricacies of the stormwater network and the outfalls that discharge near or on the city's 140km long coast.

From there, he will be involved in categorising the outfalls and checking those that need early attention -with the aim of improving the quality of stormwater that flows into streams and across beaches under the city's Project Care programme.

Mr Thomas is full of praise for Tahau - he turns 18 on January 6 - who has shown great interest and aptitude for the work, and could well find a job in local authority engineering when he qualifies.

The scholarship programme run by the First Foundation provides talented and financially disadvantaged New Zealand students with scholarships for tertiary study. Students are partnered with organisations or companies who contribute towards their tertiary fees while providing them with part-time work during their study years.

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