TRAINING CARPENTERS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 287, 2 September 1942, Page 6

TRAINING CARPENTERS

State Housing Plans

Dominion Special Service. AUCKLAND, September 1. The Housing Department at present had 20,000 applications for houses, a demand that could not be met under present circumstances, said the Minister of Labour, Mr. Web'b, at the opening of Ihe No. 3 'Carpentry Training School in Auckland yesterday. Thousands of young men lost opportunities for learning trades during the depression years and many of them were now on active service. Training schools such as those at Miramar, Petone and Auckland would be the foundation of future training operations. About 50 returned soldiers were already members of the classes and were doing excellent work. Over 150 previously unskilled men had gone through their 1 raining and the majority were now engaged in building houses for the Housing Department. The Housing Department, continued Mr. Webb, needed 8000 to 0000 men for 1 he duration of the war in the building industry, and had planned work in the first post-war year to employ 21,000 men, and in the following two years 24,000 men, to build 12,000 houses in the first year after the war, and 14,000 in each of the second and third years. He was confident, after seeing the work done by trainees from the schools, that the department could train the men required to tackle that gigantic job. The experiment of training unskilled men, said the Minister, had been an unqualified success.