The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1934. RELIEF ALLOCATIONS.

Wairarapa Age, 9 March 1934, Page 4

The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1934. RELIEF ALLOCATIONS.

As may be seen from a news item published to-day, it is likely that a deputation of mayors will interview the Minister of Employment (the Hon. A. Hamilton) in Wellington next week in an endeavour to have anomalies in relation to unemployment relief allocations cleared up. It is certainly time to bring this matter to finality. At the meeting held in Masterton last Tuesday evening, a lengthy memorandum from the Unemployment Board on the subject of the local cut in allocating, or rather denying that any" such cut has been made, was read by Mr. G. R. Sykes, M.P. When he was asked if he were satisfied with the reply he had brought back from the board, Mr. Sykes said he was not. It would have been astonishing if he had made any other response. The leading statement made in the memorandum was:—

It can be definitely stated there has been no cut in basis of allocation (to Masterton) since November, 1933.

The sufficient answer to this statement is that since the end of January, payments to relief workers in Masterton have been reduced by from 8s to 19s per month, the reductions amounting to as much as twenty per cent. No amount of devious talk can shake or get rid of this established faet. Had there been no cut in the basis of allocation, it must follow that local relief prior to the end of last January, were being raid more than the amounts authorised by the Unemployment Board. In fact, however, all such, payments are made under the constant supervision of the board. The only facts that really matter «rre 'that the cut which the board denies has been made and that hardship is thus being imposed on relief workers and their families.

As it stands, the table published in another column to-day is striking as showing the arbitrary differentiation in relief rates paid by the board. But for the secrecy in which the operations of the board are shrouded, still more remarkable anomalies probably would be disclosed. It is only fair and reasonable that the board, in its administration of relief in the various parts of the Dominion, should be required to pursue an open and above-board policy, and that where any differentiation is practised it should be capable of justification. There can be no justification, in this country, for allowing a public authority like the Unemployment Board to adopt, a policy in any degree furtive or tyrannical. It may be hoped that the responsible local administrators who are to interview the Minister of Employment in Wellington next

week will be able- to convince him that: his right course is to require the Unemployment Board to make an end of its mystery-mongering In regard to the relative allocations to metropolitan and other areas and also in regard to its administration generally.