FEW MEN OUT OF WORK

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2369, 27 January 1915, Page 7

FEW MEN OUT OF WORK

GOVERNMENT STAItTS IRRIGATION WORKS. ' The Labour Department reported yesterday that the latest returns from all over New Zealand show that the position of employment is very satisfactory. The provincial centres have forwarded reports which indicate that there is very little unemployment. In Wellington City last week 49 persons applied to the Labour Bureau for work. Already, positions have been found for" twenty-seven of tlem. _ Eighteen were placed privately, and nine sent to public works. By far the most of the Wellington unemployed were single men. Four men applied to the City Bureau to be- found, farm work, and they were immediately secured situations. More farm hands still are wanted.

The Government lave started irrigation works in Central Otago, and this (the Department reports) has helped to relieve any unemployment in the South Island. Eighteen men have been sent from Dunedin to these works, and there is authority to send over sixty more. The classes of men wanted for the irrigation works are the good labourer and the rock-man. The wages offered are 9s. per day, increasing to 10s. per day. Some little time ago the Labour Department arranged for a party of men to be sent from Timaru to the Tau-ranga-Matata railway line, which is being pushed ahead. An officer of the Department who has been over the line quite recently says that the men there are doing partioularly well. Tho work h being done under the co-operative system. Some of the men are making up to 16s. per day, plenty of them are making 10s. per.day, and some who are not of very robnst physique manage to secure 7s. for a day's work.