ENROLMENT OF SEAMEN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 35, 26 September 1911, Page 4

ENROLMENT OF SEAMEN.

Comment was rife at Port Chalmers, the Dunedin “Star” states, on the fact that application had been made for the enrolment of the crew of the oversea steamer Orari on the electoral roll. The vessel is laid up at Port Chalmers, and although she will probably be the first ship to load tl.is season’s woo} for th<?, London market, she is not likely to leave the Dominion until after the coming general election. The Orari belongs to the New Zealand Shipping Company, the crew of whose vessel Opawa, it will be remembered, were enfranchised prior to the, last general election. At that time the court decided that as the bulk of the New Zealand Shipping Company’s scrip was registered in New Zealand the crews of that company’s vessels were entitled to enrolment under the Electoral Act, provided the men had served for twelve months on those vessels. A deputation from Pert Chalmers recently waited on Sir James Carroll and asked that the Electoral Act should be so amended that cases similar to that of the enfranchising of the crew of the Opawa might not re cur. The Acting Prime Minister told the deputation that the matter would receive due consideration. In connection with the enfranchising of the crews of oversea ships, a reporter’s attention was called to the fact that a sailor who has resided in Now Zealand for the past eight months has been refused enfranchisement. He was not eligible for enrolment, although he had been previously trading regularly to Now Zealand for seventeen years in the Shaw, Savill steamers. Had he been twelve months on the New Zealand Shipping Company’s steamers he would have been eligible for enrolment without his eight months’ residence in the Dominion.