IMPERIAL EMERGENCY

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 24 September 1925, Page 5

IMPERIAL EMERGENCY

NOT BEING MET.

MIGRATION OF UNEMPLOYED. SCHEMES 01 i 1TICISED. dV CARLE —PRESS- ASSOCIATION —OOPYUKJU'I. Received Sept. 24, 9.35 a.m. LONDON, Sept. 23. The Ministry of Labour’s experimental training scheme is attracting widespread comments. The scheme is at present- limited to 2400 men annually. Residential centres accommodating four hundred men will be located at blast Anglia. Trainees for overseas must be provisionally ‘approved by some Dominion migration authority. They will lose unemployment benefits, and instead will be given free board and lodging.and an allowance of os weekly and free passage when finally accepted for migration. The Daily Chronicle points out that the present limited scheme, both for home and for overseas life, is capable of the widest expansion. There are now 225,000 unemployed men under 30 years of age, and it would cost £12,500,000 yearly to give them the proposed elemilitary training, but the unemployed payments would he correspondingly reduced. * , , The Morning Post, in a leader, states: “It is little use training men for the land if there is none to offer them. Successive Imperial and Dominion Governments have approved of the enterprise. Redistribution of population means inter-imperial migration, but little is being done to carry it out. There are Australian settlement schemes in which the Imperial Commonwealth and State Governments are partners. When will they be set in motion ? Our need is so immense, it is Instant, and no scheme so. far proposed will effect more than a negligible relief. What is required is an effort comparable with war times, when millions of men were carried overseas. That was for destruction; to-day’s purpose is wholly constructive, yet so little is being done. Fewer migrants are now going to Australia than before the war. We do not desire to apportion the blame, but this great Imperial emergency is not being met. Hundreds of million’s are being spent to Teep men and women in idleness, when they might he spent in providing them with a settled livelihood overseas. We suggest that the Government should appoint a committee, including representatives of the Dominion' and Colonial Office, a financier, and a practical ’gniculturist, to investigate the whole matter. —A. and N.Z. Assn.