“BIRDS OF PARADISE”

Taranaki Daily News, 6 December 1930, Page 9

“BIRDS OF PARADISE”

WANDERERS TOWN TO TOWN UNEMPLOYMENT AID PROBLEM. SOME’ PROFESSIONAL CADGERS. “I take it that the unemployment scheme will-deal with the birds of pas-s.-j-—i i t ad almost said paradise—,” said Mr. E. J. Carr at the meeting to consider the carrying out of the provisions of the Unemployment Act in Ne.r Plymouth last night.

“What is to be done with the birds of passage?” asked Mr. E. A. '.(May>>r of Waitara) later. “There are a good number of them. The Mayor of Inglewood can bear me out. What is tb be done with them?” “K.'i’p them in Waitara?” said Mr. Winfield, Mayor of Inglewood. That was a point on which more cooperation could be carried out with the hospital boards, said Mr. H. V. S. Griffiths. Those men, applied for work and were told they could not get it. They app dto the hospital board which gave them money to travel on to another hospital boa id. The registrations would help. There was an enormous waste in those cases and the position must he faced.

Many of them were genuinely looking for work, said Mr. P. E. Stainton. They had been unable to get work in the locality in which they had been resident and had to move on somewhere else. With the new scheme these men would have some claim on their own districts.

The professional cadger arrived at sundown walking on worn boots, “on the meat” as he called it. He had a cood pair of boots and a haversack down tne road. Yet there were also men who deserved sympathy. Some step must be taken to provide for the birds of passage, said Mr. Vickers. Three men had called on him and asked for assistance. They, said they had been given a lift from Te Kuiti. “I asked,” said Mr. Vickers, “if their good Samaritan gave them whisky too, because they had the aroma. The next I heard oi them they were in Waitara.” Unless something was done Taranaki would become the dumping ground for all of them.

If th three months residential qualification became national then the position would soon be quite all right, eaid Mr. Blyde.