SOMETHING WORTH DOING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21988, 24 June 1933, Page 12

SOMETHING WORTH DOING

10 THE EDITOR Sir, —I think the suggestion in a letter which appeared in your issue of yesterday over the signature of Mr P. W. Shacklock is worthy of very serious consideration. The question under review is the relief of distress and the expenditure of the money raised for the same. 1 consider that the present administration of the funds raised for the relief of unemployment is nothing more nor less than criminal. The thousands upon thousands of pounds which have been spent leave little to show in the way of permanent improvement. Scraping the roadsides, and trifling about in order to fill in time, is disgraceful and humiliating* to the better class of men who are compelled to undertake such work. I hope that some constructive policy will be evolved before the £IO,OOO fund of the Mayor’s is set going. Such a scheme as Mr Shacklock suggests, that of the construction of a road from Wharf street on to St. Kilda, would be something worth doing. It would add to the beauty of the city and be of distinct service to the citizens. I don’t understand what it is that prevents the powers that be, governmental and municipal, from utilising the unemployment expenditure for more productive works. Such a scheme as that proposed by Mr Shacklock would result in a substantial addition to the resources of the city, and the occupation provided would give work in which men could maintain an interest without their feeling humiliated, as many of them are now, by the paltry occupations provided for them in the way of shifting .weeds on the sides of city streets.—l am, etc., W. Dunedin, June 22.