SOCIAL SECURITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 85, 12 April 1939, Page 8

SOCIAL SECURITY

' THE REGISTRATIONS

VERY COMPLETE SYSTEM

CHECKING THE NAMES

Even though, when they pay out, they may have no happy thoughts about the Department, taxpayers in general are probably prepared to admit that the Land and Income Tax Department is thorough in its methods and is not given to missing much. If there should be any doubt about the efficiency of the methods that have been instituted to ensure that all liable under the Social Security Act meet their obligations, it should be resolved after seeing the staff at work and seeing some of the methods employed in recording, checking, and keeping tally of the payments of each individual.

Today a "Post" reporter visited the registration fee section of the Land and Income Tax Department on the seventh floor of the Ford building in Courtenay Place. A staff of nearly a hundred men and, women was at work. The offices occupy the whole of the floor space, and the scene was one of activity and well-regulated efficiency. Although the Social Security Act has not been long in operation, the staff, even now, has a very big volume of work to handle. Each morning there is a mail of seven or eight bags, and a similar quantity arrives in the afternoon. Registration forms, receipt forms, and all the other data required under the Act is sent on to this office from the post offices throughout New Zealand. The mail has first to be sorted, and that having been done it is distributed among the clerks handling the various branches of the work. MACHINE RECORDING. Not all the work is done by hand. Some wonderfully quick and efficient little machines have been installed in a room off the main office to record by the punch-card method the registrations and payments made. These machines are operated by a staff of ten girls, and although they have not been engaged in the task a very long time, they have become extraordinarily expert. At the time they are engaged in punching cards to record the registrations of males 20 years of age or over who were registered under the Unemployment Act, and between them these girls are completing approximately 10,000 cards an hour. These cards in turn pass through a checking machine, and should a card have been wrongly punched by an operator it is tracked down at once, for the machine automatically locks. When the cards have been checked in this way, they are taken to a smaller room and there they are automatically sorted numerically by another very neat and ingenious machine., which in an hour does fifty-times as much work as can be done by an individual in the same time. BIG VOLU3\?E OF WORK. With so heavy a volume of detail to attend to, machine methods are of the greatest importance in the inter- | ests of economical efficiency. This is readily appreciated when a study is made of the figures. Under the Employment Promotion Act the number of males 20 years of age or over registered totalled '500,000. With old age pensioners and others who were previously exempt but who are now liable to register under the Social Security Act, this 'total alone will be increased te 560,000 or 570,000. But the handling of these registrations and the checking of payments constitute only a small part of the work of the staff. Under the Act all women, and girls and boys of the age of 16 years or over, must now be registered, Natives included. It is estimated that when the registrations under these headings are completed, the number of women registered will be well over 500,000, and the number of youths 50,000. Apart from the task of recording all these registrations under the punch-card system, there will be the job of dealing with new registrations each year, -and the reclassification that will be necessary when the youths reach the age of 20 years and through the change of name when women marry. Each year, for example, it is estimated that 20,000 youths and girls will attain the age of 16 years and will therefore become liable for registration and payment of the prescribed fee. Altogether, when everything is completed for this year, \ approximately four million forms of one kind and another will have been dealt with by the office in connection with registration and payment of the registration fee and that constitutes only a small part of the Department's work.

To ensure that everyone who is liable under the Act is accounted for, the Department necessarily must have the co-operation of other State Departments. For example, when a person is leaving New Zealand permanently the bDepartment is notified, and .similarly the system provides for notification to the Department when a female's name is changed through marriage, and when a person dies. All these eventualities are covered, so that a very complete check is available. WOMEN TOEING THE LINE. Men, women, and youths and girls of 16 years and over have until the end of this month to comply with the registration requirements of the Act. In the case of males 20 years of age and over the duty of paying the registration fee is not a new one; they are accustomed to it because of what they were called upon to do under the Employment Promotion Act, and those^ already registered under that Act are not required to re-register. But the requirements of women and youths between 16 and 20 years of age are new. Even so, and although the registration provisions under the Act did not come into operation until April 1, the evidence is, judging from the returns coming to hand, that they are not lagging behind. The women also are filling in their application forms correctly. An officer of the Department stated today that fully 98 per I cent, of the women's application forms for registration were in order. He summed up the response by the women to date by saying that the indications up to the present time are that by the end of the month the registrations would be very near the estimated figure.