UNEMPLOYMENT LEVY

Taranaki Daily News, 8 December 1930, Page 7

UNEMPLOYMENT LEVY

PEOPLE UNABLE TO PAY. HUNDREDS. OF WAR VETERANS. The Unemplyment Act definitely forbids the payment of a sustenance allowance io any person, who is not a contributor to the Unemployment Fund, a fact which is the: cause of considerable anxiety at the present time. Although the money is pouring in, there are many people who do not possess/ the amount of the first levy, 7s fid. These are the people the Act set out to' help. • Among those who cannot pay are several hundred returned soldiers and it is estimated that fully 80 per cent, of those in receipt of relief from the hospital boards are in the same position;-The New Zealand Herald reports’ that the wife of aii unemployed njan pawned her wedding ring to enable the family to qualify for sustenance. . \ i ? Some anomalies in respect of exemp-’ tions in the Act are being revealed. Among thase exempted from payment of the levy are pensioners imder ,the Pensions Act, 1926. In addition to the aged the Act provides for pension- to the blind, to miners suffering from miners’ complaint and to veterans of the Maori and South African' wars, as well as to widows. Another class exempted comprises soldiers receiving a full pension under the War Pensions Act, 1915, A full war pension, which often is supplemen’ted by an economic pension, amounts to £2. Many men receiving Jess than the full pension, however, are incapacitated and unemployed. Yet they have to pay. the levy. There are cases of soldiers whose resources amount to only 15s a week waiting to draw their month’s pension before they can pay the 7s fid. On the other hand, any man drawing a miner’s pension or a South African or Maori War pension is exempt, notwithstanding its amount. For miners, according to a clause in the Finance Act, 1929,’ the scale is 25s a week for unmarried men, 25s for married men plus 10s in respect of the wife and 10s in respect of each child.

Naturally there is no question as to the exemption of a blind person no matter what his resources may ‘be, and seeing that the South African pension is supplementary to the old age pension, there can be nd comment but that the complete exemption of pensioned miners as opposed to tho exemption of only those soldiers receiving a full pension is an anomaly. In regard to soldiers who must pay the levy out of their pensions, it is not known what the extent of their benefit may be under the Unemployment Act. The scale of sustenance is 21s a week, plus 17s 6d for a wife and four shillings for each child. These amounts are not payable until the contributor has been unemployed for 14 days and shall not be continued for longer than 13 consecutive weeks. The secretary of the Auckland Returned Soldiers’ Association has written to the Minister asking how unemployed soldier pensioners stand in the matter—whether they will receive the scale or have the amount of their pension deducted. The chief matter of the moment, however, is how the people who have no resources are to pay the first instalment of the levy and so qualify for sustenance. The hope is.entertained that regulatio”’ will speedily be made to enable the first instalment to be deducted from the first payment.