CORRESPONDENCE LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6974, 6 October 1948, Page 8

CORRESPONDENCE

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

CORRESPONDENCE TUITION Sir,—l am writing to ask you to take up the matter of the case of the wife of a settler in the Hauturu district who was fined in the Kawhia Court for not schooling her children. This woman, as I can testify, lives fully ten miles from the nearest school, and I understand the fine and costs amounted to £ll. The family has rather recently come to the district and has a large number of children—il understand four or five of school age—’and are very hard-work-ing. It was probably maintained in the Court that correspondence courses should have been gone on with. This is a very great problem in these back-block places; attending to four or five children’s lessons is nearly a woman’s full-time job. The country is beginning to realise ths.t if something very drastic is not done about these marginal lands (the farm on which the family lives is one) many hundreds of thousands of acres are going out of production. At the present time a Royal Sheep Commission is going round the country. and shortly will be in this district collecting evidence to present to the Cabinet.

Can we blame people under the present conditions refusing to come to the back country ? As I have said, this family is ten miles from the nearest school and the same distance from the post office and store. They certainly have a telephone, the cost of erection of the line having been borne by the settlers themselves; and a loan, also raised by the settlers, metalled the road, which, by the way, is rapidly deteriorating. To get their mail they must go, for it or depend on neighbours for tits carriage. This treatment appears to be very arbitrary under the circumstances, and seems to me a case that should be taken up by all who are anxious to see fair play. The prospects for the back-block farmer on hilly country are anything from bright. Labour is almost unprocurable, as are fencing materials, etc. Artificial fertiliser at £lO 2s 6d per ton is not economic, and now their returns have been suddenly cut by 20 per cent on account of the exchange interference. —I am, etc., SETTLER. Hauturu.

(The penalty imposed was the minimum under the Act. The action of the Education Department in claiming £4 10s, prosecutor’s expenses, was certainly reprehensible.— Ed. C.)