TRAINING UNEMPLOYED

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 286, 6 November 1925, Page 9

TRAINING UNEMPLOYED

BRITISH GOVERNMENT PLAN. YOUNG MEN FOR OVERSEAS. LONDON, Sept. 25. Four experimental training centres for turning unemployed young men into “handy men” and fitting them for work at home or overseas are about to he opened by the Ministry of Labour. Tho first will be opened within a few weeks at Birmingham and the second at Newcastle. Training will last for six months. Particulars of the scheme, which was first mentioned in tho House of Commons a few days before tho recess, are given in tho Ministry of Labour Gazette, just issued. It is intended for young men, registered as unemployed, who have difficulty in finding work because they have had no opportunity of learning a skilled trade. Training centres will he of two kinds, residential and non-residential. Tho Birmingham and Newcastle centres will be non-residential; tho two residential centres will probably he in East Anglia. In the non-residen-tial centres men will bo trained for employment in this country—not for any specific trade, but to tako a general course as handy men —and these will bo drawn from the locality. For the residential centres about half tho men will bo trained for employment overseas and the others for work at home, but tho course will be adapted as far as possible to country needs. Applications for overseas training can bo made through the local exchange for ■ admission from any part of tho country. The age is 19 to 25, or 29 for ex-service men. Applicants for training for overseas must be singlo and must pledge themselves to go to a Dominion if finally •approved. Overseas men are to be trained in the handling of horses, including ploughing and care of live stock, repairs to harness, milking and simple agricultural operations, uso of simple wood-working tools, erection and repair of wire fencing and wooden hutments, and, if necessary, in treefelling and simple repairs to farm implements. .Strict discipline will bo maintained and the instructional course of any man may be terminated summarily for bad time-keeping, unsatisfactory conduct, lack of diligence, or other cause.

Of the 800 men trained annually in the two residential centres, 400 are to bo trained for overseas settlement. Tliis is the first time that such a training for overseas settlement lias been attempted. A Dominion representative will be a member of the selection panel, and the person selected for training after his course will bo granted his passage to a Dominion free.

For the present, only unmarried men are to bo taken at the residential centres. It is proposed to feed and accommodate tho men on tho army principle, and there will be a communal system as far as possible.