OCCUPATIONS FOR BOVS

Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1927, Page 15

OCCUPATIONS FOR BOVS

THE NEW APPRENTICES ACT APPLICATIONS FOR POSITIONS. NO RESPONSE FROM EMPLOYERS. The operations of the Apprentices Act and the activities of the Labour Department thereunder in the New Plymouth district throw an interesting sidelight on the conditions of youthful labour in the Dominion and incidentally disclose the attitude of both employer and prospective apprentice towards the aims of the Act. The disinclination of boys leaving the schools, even the country schools, to take up rural employment has been strikingly illustrated, the experience of those administering the Act being that there is still a decided tendency towards “the drift to the towns.” Of those boys who have registered with the department of Labour seeking employment as apprentices the greatest number favtWir carpentry and joinery, engineering, motor mechanics, and the furniture trade in something like that order, while a fair number desire to enter the drapery trade with the idea of becoming window-dressers. Only a few seek to learn farming. A few would-be plasterers have also submitted their names, no doubt attracted by the high wages offered. The activities of the Labour Department under the recent Act were explained yesterday by a New Plymouth officer. He said that all the headmasters in the schools in the district surrounding New Plymouth, bounded by Okato, Waitara and Inglewood, had been circularised, requesting them, under the provisions of the Act, to supply particulars of boys leaving the schools, the masters being supplied with forms for the boys to fill in. Full information regarding .the wages payable in each trade and the advantages offering are supplied, so that teacher, parent and boy might ehoose the lad’s future vocation, the object being to prevent boys from drifting into “blind alley” occupations.

About fifty boys have already returned their forms from the district mentioned applying for apprenticeships, but the amount of interest taken in the scheme by the employers is shown by the fact that so far not one has applied to the department for an apprentice, although fifty are offering.