RELIEF BOOTS PAWNED

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 28 June 1935, Page 6

RELIEF BOOTS PAWNED

COMPLAINTS TO COMMITTEE Many of the unemployed who receive cheap issues of working boots from the Unemployment Board or the Auckland Metropolitan Committee’s depot have been in the habit of disposing of them at pawnshops, according ‘to statements made at a meeting of the relief committee.

The officer in charge of the depot, Mr R. Grieve, said that the resolution passed last December granting to married men on sustenance the privilege of purchasing clothing and boots at half cost price had not worked satisfactorily. Advantage had been taken of the privilege, but he had never seen the men wearing these goods, and there wa.? a grave doubt whether they were buying for themselves or for into on standard rates of pay.

Although there might be a few cases of men either pawning or selling the goods supplied, the arrangement forthe buying of articles at half cost price had proved a great boon, said the Rev. T. Hallidav. Mr T. McNab, Mayor of Mount Eden, said that only that morning he and Mr Grieve had visited a pawnshop which was full of boots of Government issue. Tho committee . decided that Mr Grieve should have power to refuse an issue of articles where lie was of the opinion that the applicant, was not deserving of assistance, and it vras left to the chairman, Mr Ernest Davis, and the secretary, Mr J. >S. Brigham, to see w’lvat steps could be taken to prevent men from pawning boots obtained from the depot. The committee also decided to ask the Government to provide boots for men going to camp for the first time.