PLACING THE UNEMPLOYED

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1931, Page 9

PLACING THE UNEMPLOYED

WORKING OF NO. 5 SCHEME

172 ENGAGED IN NEW PLYMOUTH-

ALL ELIGIBLE MEN PROVIDED FOR

Under the No. 5 scheme up till yes'terday 172 unemployed from the New, Plymouth district had been given work, stated Mr. P. E. Stainton (chairman) at a meeting of the North Taranaki Unemployment Relief Committee in New Plymouth yesterday. The men were classified as follows: A men, single men; B men, men with two dependents; C men, men with three or more dependents. The New Plymouth Borough Council was employing 72 A men, 34 B men and- 27 C men. The Taranaki County Council had 3 A men, 6 B men and 15 C men. The Taranaki Hospital Board had 1 A man, 5 B men and 9 C men. In addition to these there were 53 unemployed engaged on earth work in New Plymouth and on Monday 10 men were being sent to the Kaitake Ranges to clear the tree plantations. That had enabled the New Plymouth executive to provide for all registered eligible men. There were still men registered, but not eligible, as to be eligible a 'man had to be registered in New Plymouth for 14 days. Some men had drifted iirand had been registered onlyfive days, for example. The object of this registration was, as far as possible, to make each district responsible for giving work to its own resident unemployed. One disadvantage of the. No. 5 scheme, said Mr. J. S. Connett, was the workin<r of the men, say, two or three days in the week and then putting them oif to take on fresh men. It would be very much simpler if the men could work the complete week and then have, say, two weeks off. He understood that the difficulty in that was that the men would receive too much money in a lump sum. Ou the other hand, they ini°-ht arrange for a man to have a week or work, but for the payment to be spread over a period of two or three weeks. It was inefficient to have men coming on and going off every few days. • ■ ■ . The idea of the board in drawing up the scheme, said the Hon. S. G. Smith, Minister of Labour, ’ was not to give the men a full-time job but to encourage them to find other jobs of a permanent nature. The Prime Minister and the Government had said there were to be no sustenance payments to ablebodied men, so the board had to give the men some work to do. The five and a-half working days a week made the splitting up of the work difficult, said Mr. Stainton, so the committee was going to ask the Borough Council to work on Saturday afternoons. That would give six days a week and the committee'could then work two lots pf men entitled to three days a week evenly or three lots of men entitled to two days a week without having some men with half a day’s work to "O having to be carried on into the next’ week, The committee was also considering how to make up broken time through wet days. The Unemployment Board was very grateful to Mr. Stainton and his committee, said the Minister, for the way they had thrown themselves into the work <jf helping to solve the unemployment problem.