MEN OVER SIXTY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 May 1939, Page 4

MEN OVER SIXTY

WORK TO SUPPLEMENT AGE BENEFIT. NO PROVISION MADE YET IN AUCKLAND. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, May 7. No move appears to have been made in Auckland by the Government to carry into effect the scheme announced by the Minister of Mr Webb, for the re-employment ot men dismissed from relief work because they were eligible for age benefits under the Social Security scheme. The idea is to return selected men to work for periods in the week sufficient to bring their earnings and subsidy up to £3 a week. It had been found that there were aged men, capable of manual work, whose wives were not eligible for age benefits and who, sometimes, had other dependants. Even under the scheme proposed such families will not be able to live in the style to which they had been accustomed, though the husband may be capable of full-time employment and be eager to work. Engineers of local bodies and others interviewed said they were willing to co-operate in the scheme when it is brought into effect. “Soriie of the men of 60 years and more whom we were forced to dismiss were better workers than many of the men we were permitted to retain. ’ said one local body engineer. "They were more reliable and had been trained in the school of hard and steady work. They did their work conscientiously and well and not by fits and starts like some of the younger men. - ’ With these opinions other local body engineers were in agreement, stating that they would welcome the return of many of the old brigade, the loss of whom -they had regretted.