RELIEF WORKS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 68, 13 December 1932, Page 8

RELIEF WORKS

“Public Money Frittered Away” PLEA FOR A LEAD Large sums of public money were being frittered away upon trivial and useless works, merely because they represented an easy method of granting unemployment pay for a pretence of labour, said Mr. M. G. C. McCaul when speaking at a meeting of the Wellington branch of the Town-Planning Institute last evening. The subject of unemployment, said Mr. McCaul, had been before the country so much in the last two years, that the public had become so innured to it as to be in danger of accepting it as normal. Every man and woman employed in trade and industry were paying heavily out of wages for the relief of unemployment, and they had a right to expect that the money was administered with a due sense of responsibility, and that those responsible for its disbursement would be able to point to the creation of permanent assets at least equal in value to the money spent. If an inventory were taken of the assets created in the last twelve months in exchange for the vast expenditure, said Mr. McCaul, he believed there would be a wave of indignation throughout the country that would cause Government and local bodies to reform their methods. Municipal authorities were not wholly to blame, as owing to the large amount of unskilled labour discharged, from Government employ, an onerous and unfair burden, which should have been borne by the Government, had been thrown on the cities.

So far as Wellington and district were concerned, no real improvement could take place until the Wellington City Council took the lead, said Mr. McCaul. It was the head of the Wellington metropolitan area, and should set its face against the present wasteful methods of governing the control of the unemployed. It should initiate a policy whereby relief work would produce permanent assets. He was sure adjoining authorities would cooperate in such an effort. A small body of city councillors, headed by Captain Holm, was moving in the matter, and any assistance or service which could be given by the institute to those in authority would be given wholeheartedly.