RELIEF PLAN OPPOSITION

Taranaki Daily News, 8 November 1932, Page 12

RELIEF PLAN OPPOSITION

EXTENSION OF NO. 5 SCHEME-

COUNCIL GIVES ITS OPINION.

"Complete” opposition was expressed by the New Plymouth Borough Council last night to a plan from the Unemployment Board proposing that in urban areas relief labour under scheme No. 5 might be used on private property for gardening, wood-chopping, subsoil draining, section clearing and trenching. The suggestion was that all labour would be engaged through a local body from eligible scheme No. 5workers employed ’by the local body and that the local body would be responsible for insurance, transport, supervision, etc,, of the workers concerned. The decision of the council was made on the recommendation of the works committee, which reported that the North Taranaki Unemployment Committee hod made a verbal request for the council’s opinion on the plan as set out in the board’s circular No.. 141. The reasons for the council’s opposition were: (a) That the workers would be scattered in all parts of the borough, not in groups but singly without any possibility of any supervision on the part of the council; (b) that in practice the scheme would prove cumbersome and entail work upon those charged. with its administration entirely disproportionate to the benefit accruing to 1 the worker; (c) that private people in a position to continue their, present practice of employing labour direct for gardening, wood-chopping, etc., would take advantage of the scheme, and in practice it would be found that the scheme would increase unemployment, and, as all palliative schemes did, it would assist in establishing unemployment as a permanent problem. The council formally declared the following to be additional relief works in the borough: Clearing away, rubbish, moving and sorting stocks of pipes, fittings and other materials at the corporation yards and other lands in Lemon Street and Hobson Street, and cutting away, removing or levelling any parts of these yards or lands.