UNEMPLOYED RELIEF

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 299, 1 October 1935, Page 6

UNEMPLOYED RELIEF

WANGANUI MEN’S VIEWS.

COMPULSORY. CAMPS OPPOSED. (Per Press Association). WANGANUI, This Day. A meeting of relief workers carried resolutions as follows: “That recruiting for camps should be purely voluntarily, and strongly ‘.protesting against any form of compulsion, which is an intrusion of civil rights.” ■“That men willing to go to camps should be allowed to visit their homes at frequent intervals and for their wives and families to enjoy a just and equitable standard 1 of living.” “That an effective remedy for unemployment is to be sought only in a, courageous and far-reaching policy of government.” “That the Government be urged to take immediate steps to provide an adequate remedy to restore to the unemployed' a just and equitable standard of living.”

CRITICISM BY A BISHOP.

ABOLITION OF BOARD URGED,

HAMILTON, September 30.

Strong criticism of the existing social conditions and suggestions for alleviating unemployment are made by the Bishop of Waikato (the Rt. Rev. C. A. Cherrington) in his monthly parish letter.

The suggestions embody doing away with the Unemployment Board and the responsibility of the unemployed being placed on the shoulders of borough councils and county councils, who could look after the unemployed in their own boroughs or counties. The administration would then be free of charge, and the taxes collected would go to the people for whom they were collected. There was something wrong when a man was expected to maintain a wife and family on 27s 6d a week. Further, Bishop Cherrington advocated the passage of a lew forbidding the glaring injustice of a “week’s notice,” which was supposed to be attached to the weekly wage. All workers should have reasonable notice.

“ I suppose there is nobody who knows anything about it who is satisfied with the way our unemployed in this country have been looked after,” he says. “We pay large enough taxes, and would willingly pay more of it were wanted, but the huge surplus in hand and the further lowering of this particular tax surely shows that there is something wanting somewhere.”