RABBIT CLEARANCE

Waikato Times, Volume 129, Issue 21534, 24 September 1941, Page 4

RABBIT CLEARANCE

SUBSIDIES ON WAGES CLASSES OF UNEMPLOYED (By Telegraph.—Press Association) WELLINGTON, Wednesday A subsidy on the wages of certain classes of men employed on rabbit destruction will be payable immediately and until March 31 next. The Minister of Labour, the Hon. P. C. Webb, announced today that the subsidy payable would be £3 10s a week in respect of registered, eligible and suitable unemployed men, and £3 a week in respect of men not actually unemployed but whose engagement on less important work is nearing a close and whose experience would materially assist in the Immediate objective.

It is not proposed that farms should be denied necessary labour, and one safeguard provided is that any men employed under the scheme will be made available for shearing or other seasonal work if required. Huge Annual Loss

Mr Webb said that rabbits in New Zealand caused an annual national loss of approximately £2,500,000, while in the year 1939-40 New Zealand exported over 11,000,000 rabbitrkins. He therefore hoped that every rabbit board and committee, especially in the Otago Central and Southland districts, would take advantage of the subsidy plan to increase its normal complement of rabbiters. He hoped, too, that runholders would serve their own ultimate interests by systematic, intensive killing of rabbits, and that “rabbit farming” would become a thing of the past.