NO. 5 SCHEME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 39, 15 February 1934, Page 9

NO. 5 SCHEME.

CHANGE IMPENDING ? RUMOUR OF CESSATION. «RUBBISH," SAYS OFFICIAL. According to information received in Birkenhead yesterday, the Unemployment Board's No. 5 scheme is to cease as from Friday week, but this is flatly denied by Mi". Slaughter. In the course of discussion 011 the borough programme of works at the council meeting last evening, the chairman of the works committee, Mr. G. B. Hewson, stated that yesterday an inspector of the Labour Department had informed him that as from Friday week the No. 5 scheme was to be finished, and that a certain sum was to be allowed the borough to complete works already in hand. After that date any men retained by the borough were to be paid the local body union award rate of pay, ft a week, 011 which the Unemployment Board would pay a subsidy of £1 7/. The balance of the relief workers would then have to go to camp. He had also said that much of the work done under tile No. 5 scheme was not as productive as was desired by the board and the Labour Department, and that the work in the camps was of the kind planned by the Government. " Information Given Openly." "The information was given quite openly, without any advice of caution," said Mr. Hewson this morning, "and it !is of considerable public interest. He made a tour of inspection of the borough with the foreman and myself, viewing the different works we had in hand under the relief scheme." Visits have been paid to other boroughs by inspectors of the Labour Department in the past few weeks, and j while borough officials have not been I given precisely the same information as | received in Birkenhead, they have I gathered that some change is to be i made in the system.

The Mayor of Takapuna, Mr. J. Guiniven, said be had been informed that all the men in the borough on maintenance work would have to be taken off, that "weed-chipping," as he put it, was not productive work as designed under the scheme. "I think it would have come better after the end of the financial year," he said. "Our maintenance funds are almost finished, and had it come after the end of this financial year we could have budgeted for such a contingency."

When asked what truth there was in the statements at Birkenhead last evening, Mr. W. Slaughter, officer in charge of the Labour Department, replied, "Rubbish. There is 110 truth in it whatever." Someone had been spreading rumours, he added.