Young beneficiaries

The National Party’s proposal to get young beneficiaries back to work is a good idea, but this should have been implemented years ago.

The number of beneficiaries under 25 years on a benefit has risen to 34,000, a 49% increase under Labour. It is very difficult to understand why there should be so many people on unemployment benefits when there are 1000s of employers screaming out to employ workers in every industry, retail, agricultural, etc, throughout the whole country.

If elected next year, the National government would pay $1000 to anyone who has been on the job seeker benefit for longer than three months, if they stay in work for one year.

This is ridiculous. It would be more sensible for them to immediately discontinue the benefit for everyone who is not working, is not seeking work, or cannot give a valid reason why they are not working.

With no income from a benefit, the number of ‘‘situations vacant’’ in the newspapers etc would be reduced dramatically, if they don’t disappear at all.

D H Darling Timaru

Two articles (The Timaru Herald, August 8) deal with different facets of the same problem.

Polytechs lose one-third of the students in their first 12 months and National Party leader Christopher Luxon advocates a carrot and stick economic solution to the number of young people not working. Young people are our future so the problem is ‘‘how’’?

When I started teaching I was told ‘‘The good students will succeed in spite of us, concentrate on the others’’. So in some respects Luxon is correct.

However, I do not think treating young people as economic units in the workforce is the answer, although it might help.

When negotiating teachers’ wages the two factors are qualifications and conditions – but the one thing necessary working with young people is inspiration and that cannot have a price tag. Perhaps we should bear in mind recent times.

There is never any question of the value of emergency services, but Covid has given us a new definition – essential services; a large number of which are low paid, low esteem jobs such as cleaning, delivery etc. It is good that the problem – young people who don’t seem to want to be a part of our community by contributing – has been brought into the spotlight. In the final analysis the answer lies with the young people.

My retirement was disturbed by a phone call ‘‘Would I take on three classes that some deemed were unteachable?’’ With some trepidation I said ‘‘Yes’’ knowing I would have to change from ‘‘my time’’.

First period ‘‘I do not believe you are unteachable, so I’m here. You only have to do one thing,’’ and I wrote on the board ‘‘Believe in yourself’’. Silence, puzzlement, murmurs. Some years later one of the least motivated students appeared on the front page of the Herald receiving an award for leadership. Luxon, polytechs, community, we can, we must solve this problem for the sake of our young people and our future.

Dennis Veal Timaru