Relief Work.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20026, 6 September 1930, Page 14

Relief Work.

It is to be hoped -that tlie protest made on Thursday night by the Council of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce will have some effect on the Citizens' Unemployment Committee and on the City Council. It has been obvious foxweeks that the policy of paying full award rates for work that is not in itself necessary or profitable is drying up the flow of voluntary benevolence.

The first object of any relief scheme (Ought to be to distribute the benefits as %idcly as possible, and it is difficult to understand "why the Committee and the Council so consistently ignore this fact. It is absurd, as well as unfair, to pay full award rates to a few men and leave others without the assistance that might beep them going until regular employment can bo found. But the worst aspect of the present policy is that it robs assisted men of the incentive to find, or even look for, regular employment. Expenditure on unnecessary works is bad enough. Expenditure which not only brings no direct return but deters men from seeking work that would bring a return can hardly be described in printable language. If full award rates must be paid for reasons that have nothing at all to do with economics, the money should still be spent in economic ways. To pay fourteen shillings a day for artificially created labour is to throw seven shillings at least into the gutter.