AID TO SCHOOL-LEAVERS Government’s Action Causes Concern

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31539, 29 November 1967, Page 18

AID TO SCHOOL-LEAVERS Government’s Action Causes Concern

(New Zealand Press Association; WELLINGTON, November 28. The Government’s decision, announced today by the Minister of Social Security (Mr McKay), that school-leavers who cannot find a job will be eligible for unemployment benefit, even though they may never have been in employment, has caused concern in some quarters.

The principal of the Auckland Technical Institute 'Mr R. A. Keir) commented: “I don’t think anybody in New Zealand will like the idea much. We would hope they would continue their education in some way, but we can’t cope with them at the institute —there is not enough room.”

Mr T. E. Skinner, president of the Federation of Labour, said Mr McKay’s announcement was “an indictment of the system.” He deplored the fact that l

children could be “pensioned off” as soon as they left school. “The Government is duty bound to find work for these boys or provide some advanced education course to keep them occupied,” he said. The president’ of the Employers’ Association (Mr B. P. Salmon) expressed the opinion that every effort should be made to find work for a boy before paying him unemployment benefit, ft was also essential that a boy should accept work if it was offered to him. Mr Salmon said that in the United States and Britain there were growing numbers of young people who had never worked.