FORESTRY WORKERS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 281, 22 July 1932, Page 4

FORESTRY WORKERS

So far as can be ascertained, nothing has been done .by the Uneraployment Board to provide either boots or clothing for the varions batches of single relief workers who have been drafted to the forestry camps in the Rotorua district. When this matter was first drawn to the attention of the board, and a perfectly reasonable request for assistance refused, we pointed out the hardships which were likely to be imposed upon men compelled to work without adequate winter clothing, in the rigorous climatic conditions of the Kaingaroa Plains during the winter season. Despite the fact that further efforts have been made .to obtain assistance from the Board in clothing the men, it has adhered to its original attitude and declined to relax the rigfdity of its ruling in any respect. The funds of the Unemployment Board are not available for clothing men who are unable to clothe themselves, and that is the end of it. This "strong-man" attitude is not only faintly ridiculous but quite indefensible. A number of the men who have been sent to the forestry camps, we understand, were urgently in need of adequate winter working clothes, and whatevef arrangements it made for repayment, the board should have at least protected the men from unnecessary hardship. It is high-handed actions such as this, which give a section of the board's critics, the excuse to apply such soap-box epithets as "coolie-camps" and "slave-gangs" to the single men's relief camps.