SYSTEM WANTED

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 116, 19 May 1930, Page 12

SYSTEM WANTED

MR. M'KEEN'S SUGGESTION

The possibility of absorbing all the unemployed workers in. the building trade was discussed by Mr. E. M'Keen, M.P., in the course of a conversation with a "Post" reporter this afternoon. He suggested that the Government should make a start with various public buildings in the city, mentioning particularly the Art Gallery and Museum, the new railway station, the completion of Parliament Buildings, and the proposed new Government Buildings. Mr. M'Keen said that in replying to a deputation from Labour organisations the other day the Acting-Prime Minister (the Hon. G. W. Forbes) had favoured the setting up of a committee to organise the finding of employment-for those out of work. A similar committee had been set up a few'years ago and very valuable work had been done in exploring the avenues of employment in the'city, and he was of the opinion that if similar committees were functioning in all the main centres better results would accrue than as a result of the present haphazard methods. At present workless men were travelling from place to place day by day in search of the elusive job. In Wellington many large public works were being held in abeyance which would have to be undertaken in the next year or so. There was the pulling down of the huge building on the Mount Cook site and the erection of the Art Gallery and Museum, the preparations for the erection of the new railway station, the erection of the new wing of Parliament Buildings, the foundations of which would employ over 100 men, and the commencement of the proposed new Government Building's. Mr. M'Keen snid there was an urgent need for new Government Buildings to house the Departmental staffs. The plans were supposed to be ready, and the urgency of the work would be rea; Used when it was pointed out that eighteen Government Departments were now housed in privately-owned buildings scattered over the city. "It is amazing that the State gets the efficiency it does from these Public servants when one considers that many are working under the most depressing conditions and are accommodated in offices totally unsuited for their work," said Mr. M'Keen. "An annual rental of £24,000 is paid.for these privatelyowned offices, and this sum capitalised at 6 per cent, would provide a sum of £144,000 for the erection of new buildings without costing the taxpayer one brass farthing." Mr. M'Keen said that if any one of the jobs he had mentioned were undertaken it would absorb all the skilled and unskilled men in the building trade who were at present unemployed.