UNEMPLOYMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21308, 13 April 1931, Page 8

UNEMPLOYMENT

WOMEN AND GIRLS DESTITUTE SERIOUS POSITION IN AUCKLAND A SPECIAL REGISTER OPENED (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, April 12. The National Council of Women, fearing that many of the girls in Auckland who find it impossible to obtain work may go astray, haa opened a register for unemployed girls and already it contains 700 names. Several girls have gone into the bureau with tattered clothes, broken down shoes and pallid faces, obviously famished. They have been given a good meal to help them on their way. Girls who have held good office positions and who have lost their jobs through retrenchments in the staffs are so desperate that they are prepared to do anything. They say they will go to the country and work in orchards or on farms, anything to save them wandering round the streets in a fruitless search for work. Many have eaid they are down to their last penny. Recently one girl was caught just in time as she climbed to the parapet of Grafton bridge and was about to plunge to her death. “ If these women did not stick together I don’t know where they would be,” said Miss Basten. “There are many terrible coses. One woman walks in from Onehunga every day in the hope that we will have found something for her. There is one family of seven women, and not ona of them can get a job. There are also many married women who have children to keep, and there is quite a number of secondary school girls. We know that there are hundreds of office girls who can’t find work, but so far only HO have registered.” The following is the story of a southern girl's life in Auckland. She slept one night in a pavilion at Victoria Park. She slept other nights in lorries parked in Stanley street. Her daily wash at the handiest water tap sufficed, and a small hair comb and a powder puff helped to complete her toilet. She begged food at irregular intervals. She was often hungry, famished and weak, and almost in a state of collapse. This girl of 21 was picked up recently in a city lane. She had slept out because she was too proud to ask for assistance. Down south she has a baby • girl nearly three years old, and she has to find money for the baby’s maintenance. Her home was broken up and she left her native town to find work in Wellington. She came on to Auckland, and with no prospects of finding a job in an office she started as a waitress in a city restaurant. At her work she slipped and injured herself and was away for some time, and when she went back she found that nor position had been filled. Her plight was then desperate. She had no money and there was nobody to whom she could turn. She wandered round the streets at last, and her landlady demanded the few shillings she owed for board. The girl could not pay and she left, and her trunk of clothes was kept as security. In the daytime the streets were very friendly with the action of the people and the traffic, and things were not so bad while the bright lights of the theatres twinkled in Queen street, but when the shows were out and the streets were deserted the outlook was drab indeed. At last she was found on the verge of collapse in a by-way. Friends who did not know she was in such a desperate position looked after her until she was strong again, and now she has money for herself and her baby.

POSITION IN WELLINGTON 1000 WORKLESS WOMEN. (Per United Press Association.) : WELLINGTON, April 11. With the possibility of more than 1000 •women and girls out of Work in Wellington the leaders of women’s organisations are considerably perturbed. Efforts are being made to arrange for the provision of shelter, food, and training for those who have no home and are without means of providing for themselves. Unemployment among women and girls, particularly among girls who have been earning their own living, was discussed at a meeting of delegates from all the principal women’s organisations. Schemes proposed for relief were left to a committee to consider before calling a general meeting of unemployed women and girls in the near future. It was stated that nearly 200 women and girls were registered at the Labour Office. REGISTRATIONS FOR PAST WEEK A DECREASE OF 430 . (Per United Press Association.) ■' WELLINGTON, April 11. The total number of unemployed registered in New Zealand for the week ended April 6 was 37,598, compared with 38,028 for the previous week, a decrease of 430.