TRAINING FOR FUTURE EMPLOYMENT.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 124, 11 June 1937, Page 4

TRAINING FOR FUTURE EMPLOYMENT.

The strong appeal to local bodies which our present Government finds itself compelled to make in the way of seeking assistance to provide work for the unemployed cannot but be very disappointing to those who accepted Labour leaders' election promises that, with their advent to power, unemployment would disappear, As a matter of fact, taking into account the 18,000 that have been given employment on the easy recourse of extensive public works, the absorption into ordinary avenues of employment is probably no more, perhaps a little less, than would have happened under any other Government with the return of botter times. In any event, we have still to face the winter with a very large body of ostensibly employable men who are still without employment and, no doubt with many of them unwillingly, have to be content with the sustenance allowance. So, praetically adopting the same recourse as did the previous Government under much less favourable conditions, the loeial bodies are called upon for help. They, unfortunately, are not in anything like as good a position to grant it, at any rate without some very substantial subsidy from the Government's own Employment Fund. Beyond this a very considerable number of the willing unemployed are n6t suited for the work which local bodies might offer. There is thus a great deal to commend the suggestion put forward last evening by the Hastings Mayor that portion of the Employment Fund might be devoted to the training of yaung men and youths, now. in. idleness, to fit them for employment in primary and secondary industries. We are entitled to hope, despite all the Testrictions and obstacles that have been placed in the way, that with the continuance of returning prosperity, industrial aetivities will increase, even if somewhat slowly. The least that can be done for these young folk, whose ill fate is has been to come to adoleseenee during the depression, is to fit them to fill such openings for remunerative. employment as the future may offer.