DOMINION ITEMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 June 1944, Page 4

DOMINION ITEMS

YOUTHS SI2ITENCED AUCKLAND, June 25. Sentences of reformative detention were passed by Judge Callan, to-day, on two Cecil John Norris, 19, and Walter Raymond Green, 19, for robbery with violence last month, Avhen a considerable sum of money Avas taken from the proprietor of Brown Derby Cafe. The Judge said the cafe proprietor Avas followed by both accused on his Avay home in the early morning, carrying the day’s takings, and Avas attacked and robbed. Norris had hit him with an empty bottle, Avhen the other youth Avas" grappling with him and was regarded as the worst offender.

Sentence Avas passed of three years’ detention on Norris, and tAvo years’ on Green.

RAILWAY CLERKS. AUCKLAND, June 15. Dissatisfaction with the reply of the Controller of Manpower (Mr. Rockett) to the objections raised by the Auckland branch of the Railway Officers’ Institute, to the direction of railway clerks to labouring work on railways, or elsewhere, was expressed by a member of the Institute this morning. It was stated that a great amount of experience and study was necessary to enable railway clerks to pass examinations and fit themselves lor thq> highly skilled work they carried out .in one of the Dominion’s most essential services, and this should not, in national interest, be interrupted by placing them in uncongenial work, when they returned to the railways after being on service in the Army. These men were a much greater asset to the country, if drafted to the present heavily burdened station clerical staffs, handling a record volume of train running and signalling, than if, they were required to become surfacemen, workshop labourers, miners, timber workers, or the like.