A CRYING SHAME.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XII, Issue 2370, 29 May 1906, Page 4

A CRYING SHAME.

We have bad occasion in previous issues to refer to the class of men that are being employed on the North Island Main Trunk Railway Line, it being computed that no less than 500 “rotters” bad been sent there. AVe now learn that the great majority of the 170 men who arrived in Wellington the other day, and who had been sent out as navvies, are physically unfitted to do the work expected of them, and undergo the privations incidental to such work at the present season of the year. No care seems to have been taken in the selection of the men at Home, and proof of this is shown in the fact that one of the number was an attendant in a lunatic asylum before deciding to emigrate. Mon were anxious to know whether there was accommodation for their wives and families at the works, and had evidently not thought it necessary to inquire at Home, or had been misled, as to labour conditions prevailing here. It is a crying shame that men unfitted for nawying work should be brought to the colony, especially at a time when there are “500 rotters” employed on the Main Trunk line. A representative of the Labour Department should liifte selected the men before they were allowed to leave England : the High Commissioner was not qualified to judge of the capabilities of the men. even if lie had had the time or inclination to do so. The importation of men not fitted for hard, physical work under trying conditions is also decidedly unjust to the men and to the colony, as the men thus disappointed are not likely j to act as advertisments for New | Zealand. The whole matter should 1 ho inquire” into, and in the meantime further importations of so-called “navvies” stopped —at all events until some competent man is appointed at Home to judge as to the suitability or otherwise of the men who seek employment in this country.