EMERGENCY PRECAUTIONS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23537, 15 January 1942, Page 3

EMERGENCY PRECAUTIONS

Sir, —Some weeks ago you reported the necessity for more recruits for the Emergency Precautions Services and the statement that the Government was considering using compulsion for this purpose. Last Friday you gave a long account of the meeting in the Civic Theatre, at which addresses were given by the Mayor and Mr Machin, and they both appealed for recruits for the Emergency Precautions Services. Can the leaders explain how it is that although I enrolled in the EmergencyPrecautions Services at the beginning of last month I have still, approximately five weeks later, heard no word from the authorities, not even a recognition of my enrolment. This morning’s issue of your paper carries an advertisement for a fire guard organiser at the small remuner-, ation of £ls a week. I would like to know who is paying this £ls a week, the city ratepayer or the Government taxpayer? I have always understood that the Emergency Pre-: cautions Services organisation was an honorary one. I consider that the public have a right to know and that the Mayor a duty to inform the public. Just two more questions. Is it correct that the Emergency Precautions Services went into recess during the holidays, and has there yet been any practice alarm for the emergency precautions workers? —Yours, etc., E.P.S. VOLUNTEER. January 13, 1942, [Mr W. Machin, chairman of the organising committee of the E.P.S., when this letter was shown to him, said that the correspondent would receive acknowledgement of his enrolment. The advertisement for a fire guard organiser, which had been inserted on an instruction from Wellington, had now been withdrawn. It was not correct that the E.P.S. had gone into recess during the holidays. The services were working 12 hours a day.] ‘