P.E.P. jobs hope at Lyttelton

Press, 19 July 1983, Page 9

P.E.P. jobs hope at Lyttelton

Up to 65 Project Employment Programme workers could be provided with jobs in Lyttelton Borough during the next three years, the Lyttelton Borough Council heard last evening. This was the information contained in a letter sent by the Lyttelton Town Clerk, Mr D. A. Hillier, to the Labour Department in Christchurch. Councillors heard that the Labour Department had approved in principle the council’s scheme to provide the jobs and was awaiting more detailed applications for planned projects. Mr Hillier said in the letter that the Lyttelton Borough Council had 23 persons employed on P.E.P. projects: The council believed that it could arrange more employment for P.E.P. workers provided some problems experienced in the past could be solved.

The council had resolved the problems of lunch rooms and transport for the workers, but it felt that there were still some difficulties arising from the supervision of staff and equipment. Among the suggestions the council made to the department were that several persons be employed to supervise the projects.

Workers involved in most projects should be organised into groups of four with one paid as a ganger under the labourers’ award. Others should be employed to drive the workers to jobs, look after the tools and equipment, and help prepare wages. Mr Hillier listed 11 areas in which the council felt it could provide jobs for P.E.P. projects which lasted six months to a year. Further work would be available for successive six-

month periods up to a total of three years. Old library Draft tender documents for the old Lyttelton Library building, at the corner of Oxford Street and Sumner Road, were still being drawn up, councillors heard. The documents should be ready for the next meeting of the finance committee, said the committee’s chairman, Cr Mary Cretney.