HINTS TO COMMITTEES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 68, 21 March 1931, Page 10

HINTS TO COMMITTEES

USEFUL TO EVERYONE

In a circular addressed to unemployment committees, the Unemployment Commissioner (Mr. Malcolm Eraser) gives some guidance, much of which may with advantage be extended to workers. Only wage earners —men regularly working for wages —are to bo found work, as men in a small way of business whose takings have dwindled owing to tho depression, the injured and sick, aged and infirm, are outside tho provisions of the Unemployment Act, and exempt from the levy. The aim is to relieve genuinely unemployed workers seeking and needing work. Casual workers or short-time workers regularly obtaining periods of work laeh week cannot register as unemployed, and are therefore not eligible for work under the schemes. If refunds of wages are actually made in cases where the rules issued by tho Unemployment Board havo been violated, it is quite likely that the Audit branch will issue a requisition against tho local body concerned. Private resources sufficient to support a man should debar him from being given work, and in doubtful cases a statutory declaration should be mado. Tho farmer or business man who normally depends on his own or even a relative's farm, holding, or business for support, is not eligible for work. A man working under No. 5 scheme who obtains more than a week's continuous work privately cannot be re-employed under the scheme until he again qualifies by being unemployed for fourteen days and >oing registered as such. The man wWb fails to provide for his dependants, although h« is receiving three or'four days' work under scheme 5, particularly if he squanders his wages .in drink or gambling, should bo given an opportunity to sign an agreement authorising payment of all or portion of his wages to his wife. If ho refuses and cannot produco satisfactory proof that ho is contributing towards the support of his family, he may be refused further work. "In any district where there are no unemployed registered and qualified," says tho circular, "it must be recognised that the board's schemes do not operate unless registered unemployed aro drawn on from those available in the nearest centre. It is not the board's concern that necessitous or important works bo undertaken in any district, however much they may be desirable, if thero are no unemployed men to bo placed. Scheme No. 0 is not designed to assist local authorities, nor schemes la and 4b to assist tho farmer. They have been introduced in order to place as many unemployed as possible into productive work where they would not, without such help, bo placed, thus providing them with food and shelter during the winter period." Individuals in necessitous circumstances, it is stated, shall, receive prior consideration if they come within the scopo of the Act.