a question about translation

[Aishi]

I have a simple question about "白鹿原" by 陈忠实.
I know that there is an English translation for this novel, but I didn't manage to find in on the Internet, only the original in Chinese.
There's a number of lines I don't understand in the part that I was tasked to translate.
1) 鹿子霖一上任乡约就施展出非凡的办事能力和组织才能。他用白鹿仓拨给他的十分有限的经费，在白鹿镇买下一院破落户的民房。房屋已经破败不堪，庭院里散发着一股酸滋滋臭烘烘的气味。他雇请来卫木匠，向所辖的十个村子摊派小工，把三间大厅和两间厢房全部翻修一新。
Here, I don't get 他雇请来卫木匠, precisely the 卫 part. Is it the carpenter's surname?..
Also, did I get it right: first, Lu Zilin hires a carpenter, then he sends unskilled laborers to the villages under his management, and after that renovates the buildings in his own mansion? I'm a bit confused as for why did he send laborers somewhere if he was rebuilding his mansion

[Lu]

摊派 according to my dictionary means 'to demand contributions', so he orders laborers from the villages he manages to work on his mansion.

I'm afraid I don't understand the 卫 either. It could be the carpenter's surname, if this is a carpenter the reader already knows and it's relevant that Lu Zilin asks this specific carpenter, but from context that doesn't seem the most likely explanation. I thought perhaps it was a typo for 位, but from googling a bit, it doesn't seem to be.

 

Also from what I find, I don't think there is an English translation of 白鹿原. Where did you find that there is?

[Aishi]

I thought I saw it being sold on Amazon and the likes, but now I start to believe those are all Chinese editions. 

I tried ctrl-f-ing through chapters around this one for occurances of "卫木匠", but I didn't manage to find him elsewhere. Is it better to discard this character or to decide that it's his surname?

Thank you very much for 摊派, I was only looking at the familiar 派 part

[阿季福]

Actually there is a carpenter whose surname is 卫 in the first chapter. I don't know whether the whole 卫 family are carpenters, but I am sure that 卫老三 is a carpenter. He forces his third daughter to marry 白嘉轩.

[Jim]

I got my copy signed by Chen Zhongshi himself when he came to Beijing to do a talk years back! Carpenter Wei is a character, he's mentioned in this review: https://www.douban.com/group/topic/32002769/

Lu is right about the 摊派, as well as sharing round a work quota like this it's also used for having a whip-round when e.g. you decide to do up the shrine to the God of the Soil.