H.—llA.

Men who are refused relief in accordance with the above have the right of appeal to the Head Office of the Department, which decides the matter after giving due consideration to all the relevant evidence. A brief outline of the procedure governing payment of sustenance is as follows : Sustenance recipients are required to report in person once each week and again later in the week to uplift the payment. This practice is a necessary safeguard to ensure that men in ordinary employment do not draw sustenance pay. In certain cases, where hardship would be entailed by requiring the applicant to report twice weekly, only one attendance may be required. In those cases where applicants reside at too great a distance from the town where they are required to report, and the distance also prevents them calling for the sustenance payments, the applicants are allowed to complete their declaration forms before a responsible person (J.P., police constable, &c.) at their point of residence, and post the forms to the district employment officer or certifying officer. Payment is then effected by means of sustenance warrants. Persons in receipt of sustenance payments are required to make weekly declarations of their income for the week preceding that in which they report for sustenance. On this information the sustenance payable for the current week is assessed. In the first week in which an applicant becomes eligible for relief assistance after registration or re-registration, he is granted the full sustenance allowance applicable to his conjugal classification except where the income declared for the previous week exceeds the scale maximum permissible, in which case a corresponding reduction in the sustenance allowance is effected. In order to encourage the acceptance of such private work as may be offering, a special concession applies where a sustenance recipient secures full-time employment for one calendar week only. He is then eligible in the week following that in which he secured the full-time employment for either his full sustenance allowance or an amount that will bring his total income for the two weeks up to the maximum permissible income for a fortnightly period —whichever is the lesser sum. Any adjustments required on account of earnings in the previous week affect only the sustenance for the current week, and are not carried over to a subsequent period. The present maximum rates of sustenance are —

Scheme No. 5 (Work Relief). The policy of the Department is to encourage local bodies to put in hand full-time works for the employment of displaced labour. Subsidies are offered by the Department for this purpose, and many local bodies have changed over from Scheme No. 5 part-time work to full-time employment. Scheme 5 refers to the organized intermittent employment which was the main feature of the early administration of unemployment relief. Generally speaking, it is the intention of the Government to allow Scheme 5 to gradually disappear and to concentrate on full-time employment. To bridge the gap during short periods of unemployment there is much that can be said in favour of organizing intermittent employment as an alternative to sustenance or " dole payments." By this method the worker temporarily displaced from industry is enabled to maintain his spirit of independence, physical deterioration is prevented, and the State salvages at least some proportion of the economic waste, which is the worst feature of unemployment. These advantages which might be obtained in favourable circumstances by organizing intermittent employment were completely negatived in the early administration of this scheme. The scheme appears to have been introduced originally not because of the advantages mentioned above, but because of a declared policy not to grant relief payments except when work had been performed in exchange for the payment. This policy produced a search for work rather than for value, with the obvious result that tasks were set to be performed in exchange for relief which obviously had no value. This procedure, as might be expected, caused local authorities, who were in the main charged with organizing the work, to become indifferent as to adequate supervision, and in all cases where this happened (and there were many) not only physical, but moral, deterioration quickly resulted. A second feature which tended to destroy any value that might be obtained from the early operation of this scheme was the practice of paying the worker less than the recognized standard rate for the work he performed. This policy not only presupposed a lower standard of work, but provided the greatest incentive to a lowering of effort on the part of the workers engaged.

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F7~l Classification. Rate. Classification. Rate. s. s. Class A—Single men .. . . .. 20 Class F —Married, with wife and four 51 children Class B—Married man, with wife only .. 35 Class G —Married, with wife and five 55 children Class C —Married, with wife and one child 39 Class H —Married, with wife and six 59 children Class D—Married, with wife and two 43 Class I —Married, with wife and seven or 63 children more children Class E—Married, with wife and three 47 children