Labour plea for jobless

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 6

Labour plea for jobless

Parliamentary reporter , A call for prompt and widespread action to curb rising unemployment among young people has been made by Mrs M. Batchelor, the Labour member of Parliament for Avon. “The report of the Christchurch Employment AdvisoryCommittee on youth unemployment makes depressing reading.” she said. The survey had debunked; several myths about the atti-j tudes and actions of unem-l ployed young people, but it also illustrated with “frightening clarity” the inade-

quacies in the present system of vocational training and retraining. It was no use concentrating extra effort on young children in the “International Year of the Child,” if New Zealand was not going to equip its older children, the teen-agers, to be able to enter the work-force. “The expectation of gaining work must be fulfilled, or! we will be left with a generation of bitter and disillusioned young adults,” said! [Mrs Batchelor, who is Lab- 1 [ our’s spokeswoman on family [ affairs, as well as being a. member of Labour’s caucus! committee on industrial relations and employment. The recommendations made by the committee in the report were sensible and the Ministers of Finance, Labour,

and Education were urged to take note of them. “The findings of the survey relate to Christchurch only, but from my visits to other parts of the country and discussions with my colleagues I know that a similar situation exists in most areas.” said Mrs Batchelor.