UNEMPLOYMENT FUND

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 241, 18 October 1935, Page 2

UNEMPLOYMENT FUND

BARGE CREDIT BALANCE LACK OF NEW INDUSTRIES Though a wider range of exemptions and reduced unemployment taxation operated during the year, the annual report of the Unemployment Board submitted to the House of Representatives yesterday, shows that the revenue increased by £183,000. The report, which contains voluminous details of various relief schemes, is valuable for its survey of basic conditions relating to the problem. £4,000,000 Expended. The fund opened the year with £621,000 cash, and concluded with a credit balance of £1,332,946 after expending nearly £4,000,000. The board estimates the current year's revenue at £3,821,000, and its policy of considerably increasing the amount of full-time employment at standard rates will greatly add to the current expenditure. Disappointment is expressed at the slow development of additional secondary industries, though the number of persons employed has increased by 9000 during the year. The board states that it feels impelled to draw attention to the fact that included in the 40,000 wholly unemployed at the end of last July there are some thousands of men who, under normal industrial conditions, would be regarded as unemployable in the majority of ' cases. This arises not from a disinclination to work, but from physical or mental disability. “If these men were ruled ineligible for uemployment relief, it is clear,” declares the report, “that they would be a charge on hospital hoards.” A former estimate of 10,000 unem'ployables is supplemented by a statement that possibly this figure might reach 15,000. “A further estimate of those capable of engaging in ordinary industrial employment, but not considered capable of earning stand-

ard rates of pay on public works on a co-operative basis, is approximately 10,000. There are thus between 15,000 and 20,000 men on relief who are considered incapable of making a success of heavy manual employment.” “The difficulty in inducing city men to take employment in the country when it involves separation from homes is,” says the board, “understandable, but the recent decision to increase the rates of pay on standard public works will, it is expected, obviate the former trouble of manning works now being arranged.” The average number of contributors to the fund is 413,000, and of the total Maori adult male population 13,000 have elected to become contributors.