ABLE-BODIED MEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 9

ABLE-BODIED MEN.

UNEMPLOYED SOLDIERS. FIVE HUNDRED REGISTERED, INQUIRY BY COMMISSION. ATTEMPT TO SOLVE PROBLEM. Five hundred ex-servicemen are. registered with the Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association as being wholly or partly unemployed, but the association is anxious to secure full information as to the circumstances of men in distress for presentation to the commission that has been set up by the Government to devise a scheme for the employment of the disabled. Satisfactory progress is being made by the association with the collection of evidence, but further co-operation of men likely to be affected by the scope of the inquiry is required. The big percentage of the men who require work are able-bodied, but have no permanent positions, only working a few days here and a few days there. The association proposes to tabulate any information it receives, and this will be placed before the commission in concise form when it sits in Auckland about the end of October. "Wo look upon the inquiry as very important indeed, as it is a definite effort to grapple with the serious position existing amongst returned men in respect to employment," said the secretary of the association this morning. "The objects of the commission are to obtain reliable figures in regard to unemployment, and devise some scheme by which unemployed ex-servicemen might be employed at work they are capable of doing with a little trainimr. If the commission is successful it will be seen that pensioners at present in receipt of the economic pension will be able to earn more than the economic pension they are receiving, and at the same time retain their independence and self-respect. It will be quite obvious, I think, that tho economic pension will not be interfered with, unless the pensioner is able to do work found for him and refuses it. It is enually obvious that the economic pension should not be continued in such cases."