NO MORE MONEY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 288, 31 August 1921, Page 6

NO MORE MONEY

FOR UNEMPLOYED RELIEF WORK IN CITY ALL MEN BEING PUT OFF THIS WEEK Yesterday the Mayor (Mr. It. A. Wright, M.P.) announced that the City Council had come to tho end l of its financial tether in respect to unemployed relief works. He regretted exceedingly that* this w?as the case, as many of the men who had been employed in gorsegrubbing on the Town Belt represented genuine cases of distress, some of them being absolutely in extremis. The council had done its very best to eke out the money available, but that had now come to im end. The services of some of the men so employed hod already been dispensed with, and the rest (numbering over 100) would bo put off at tho end of the current week. Tho money referred to, said the Mayor, consisted of .£lOOO advanced by the Government, which was subsidised by another <£looo from the City Council’s general fund. Most of the men who had been employed were married men with families, but here and there single men with obligations thUt could not be overlooked had been temporarily accommodated. In some cases men knew where they could! obtain work elsewhere, but could not "raise the wind” to get there, though after two or three weeks’ work they had managed to eave enough to take them away to where wages were offering. The position whs deplorable, as there were still many unemployed in the city, but tho council was simply at the end of its resources. In all, some 250 men had passed through the council’s hands since the relief works were instituted.