FARM WORK IN HOLIDAYS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23811, 3 December 1942, Page 6

FARM WORK IN HOLIDAYS

200 BOYS VOLUNTEER

FEW APPLICATIONS FOR LABOUR

About 200 schoolboys, 65 of them from the West Coast, have volunteered to work on farms in Canterbury during the holidays, but only 10 or 12 farmers have applied for schoolboy labour. This information was given by the secretary of the Christchurch Youth Centre (Mr W. F. Anderson), when he waited on the North Canterbury District Council of Primary Production yesterday to ask for its assistance in solving the problem. Mr Anderson said the boys had been told that they would be assisting the war effort by going on farms and helping to keep up production, and they had responded admirably. The Youth Centre had organised the schoolboy labour scheme last year and had placed 114 boys on farms, but this year the primary production council had been given the job of organisation. The Youth Centre was rather disappointed that the scheme had been taken out of its hands. One difficulty, of course, was that the secretaries of the district primary production committees did not have the time to go round and publicise the scheme to the farmers. “'Now we are faced with 200 boys who don’t know what to do with their holidays if they are not allowed to go on farms, and we have got 10 farmers,” concluded Mr Anderson. After Mr Anderson had withdrawn, Mr A. H. Spratt suggested that the council would probably be doing a service to the fanners and primary production, if it had not made a job of the scheme, by passing it back to the Youth Centre. The chairman (Mr R. T. McMillan) said it was rather late in the day to hand the scheme over to the Youth Centre. The council should ask the district committees to co-operate with Mr Anderson. Mr I. L. M. Coop said that every farmer wanted to know where he could get schoolboy labour, and where the boys were to be sent after they had been finished with. A notice should be inserted in the newspapers stating that the boys were available at the Youth Centre from December 10 to the end of January. The council decided to notify its district committees to get in touch with Mr Anderson, and also agreed that he should be associated with the secretary of the council to give the necessary publicity to the scheme.