The Rationing Scheme.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20621, 10 August 1932, Page 10

The Rationing Scheme.

The Unemployment Commissioner, in h letter printed in Thb Press yesterday, replied a little ungraciously to a request from Christcburch relief organisations for details of the Unemployment Board's rationing scheme. It

was surely unnecessary to ask those who made the request to remember the Board's difficulties, for the wording conveyed no suggestion of either criticism or impatience. Nor would the Board be entitled to feel aggrieved if the request had been critical. Miscalculations and delays in connexion with the new rationing scheme should be excused and by reasonable people are being excused; but the Board's strange reluctance to be explicit has puzzled and disturbed those who are trying to supplement its work. The organisations in Christchurch which asked for irformation did so, not because they were hostile or idly curious, but because they wanted some idea of the amount of supplementary relief they will have to provide. This being so, the Board's references to its critics are irrelevant and do not help it to look either willing or able to tell relief organisations what they want to know. To say that the details asked for cannot be given because "the measure of " relief granted is entirely dependent "upon the ascertained needs of each " case " either misses the point or confesses that the scale of relief has no clear principle. It is hard to believe that in issuing relief the officials of the Labour Department have no guide other than their own discretion. In any case, the decision of the ActingMinister for Employment to hold an official enquiry into the working of the Board's rationing scheme in Christchurch seems to show that he at least thinks the situation needs clarifying. When the results of that enquiry are known, the public will be able to judge whether the Board has been unreasonably reticent.