Moving to the Towns

Te Ao Hou, March 1964, Page 11

Moving to the Towns Rather like the problem of leaving school and finding a job is the problem of the family that shifts from the country into the town. The Council members and others attending the seminar felt that those of you already living in the towns could do a great deal to help newcomers to settle down happily to city life. This is work that Maori Committees in the cities could do, as, indeed, some of them are already doing. We are sure that the Department of Maori Affairs would be glad to work along with any Committee that undertakes to help new arrivals who often find city life strange and difficult for a start.

Altogether the seminar passed forty-nine recommendations for the Council to work on. Some of them can be put into effect with little difficulty. Others will provide us with plenty of work for the months to come. District Councils, Executives and Committees throughout the country will have the opportunity to follow up the seminar recommendations if they find them acceptable. This first Council seminar was confined to one major subject—Maori social progress, the direction it is taking and the snags that delay it. There are, of course, many other questions that need to be examined in the same careful way, land problems being one of the most obvious. It will be up to the new Council, which will be chosen following the re-election of Maori Committees in February, to carry on the work so ably started by the 24 members at present serving on the Council.