Training For Maoris

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 20

Training For Maoris

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, August 8. Further new courses will be started next year to develop employment opportunities for young country Maoris who need help when they come to towns and cities. The Minister of Maori Affairs (Mr Hanan) said today that new schemes for apprenticeship training in sheetmetal work and diesel mechanics would be started in Auckland, and a preemployment course for girls

would be provided at Hamilton.

Mr Hanan said that in 1969 14 apprenticeship courses in 10 trades at four centres would have an intake of 228 young men.

The first special training centre was established at Auckland in 1959, in carpentry. At the beginning of 1968, 1051 school leavers had been taken at the foul centres in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Hamilton.

Of these, 600 had completed the courses and had been placed with private employers. Some 295 of these had completed their apprentice, ships. Mr Hanan said that a pleas ing and significant feature of this trade training was the comparatively low “drop-out" rate of trainees who had been placed with employers. This continued to be lower than the “drop-out” rate for all apprentices. Maori trainees were continuing to obtain excellent results in the trade examinations. Passes of 100 per cent were obtained in 1968 by classes in several trades, and the pass rate of the trainees in the preliminary examinations was better than the New Zealand average. The new pre-employment course at Hamilton would

help a selected number of female school leavers from country districts.

Mr Hanan said that in a time of some employment difficulty it was imperative that the younger Maori people leaving school were not forced into unskilled jobs.