DISCORD IN DUNEDIN

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1933, Page 9

DISCORD IN DUNEDIN

MAYOR’S WORKS POLICY. LOAN SCHEME REJECTED. “This £s but the first round of perhaps a 15-rounds contest,” declared the Mayor of Dunedin, the Rev. E. T. Cox, when he made a warm attack on the finance committee, which he accused of squandering the public funds, at a meeting of the city council last week, the committee having reported unfavourably on his project to borrow £70,000 for relief works. In moving the adoption of the finance committee’s report the chairman of the committee, Mr. A. H. Allen, said that the amended proposals submitted to the committee by the Mayor were in direct conflict with the original he placed before the council. The original scheme was to provide for constructive, reproductive works upon which the relief workers were to be paid award rates of pay. That’ scheme was investigated by the finance committee and it was at once evident that to extend to any large numbers of relief workers the opportunity of earning award pay and employing them on capital works was hopelessly out of the question. It was shown that to subsidise relief pay up to award rates for 1000 men for three days per week on works requiring 50 per cent, for materials and supervision charges and' 50’ per cent, labour, would entail a yearly expenditure not of £70’,000, as suggested by the Mayor, but of £140,000 to £150,000. That position' was explained to the Mayor, said Mr. Allen, and he admitted that such a course was impracticable and submitted new proposals. The points of difference in his two schemes were that instead of subsidising relief pay up to award rates, as he first proposed, married men were to be given 10s. a week and single men ss. a week in addition to their relief pay; and, further, the - class of work upon which they were to be used was to be radically altered, with the result that only about 61 per cent, of the total wage bill was. tp be used on 50-50 works, and the large percentage of 56.1 per cent, on works of .a class in which only £lO for each £lOO was to be expended on supervision, material and cartage charges—in other words, 90 per cent, of the total was to go in relief labour.

The report of the committee was adopted, the Mayor and three councillors voting l against the recommendation.