Welfare payments
Those unemployed people and communities that have existed at the Government’s largesse, sometimes for generations, will find themselves further marginalised as a new motivated unemployed insist on a culture change within our welfare agencies with little tolerance for those with a parasitic nature ever willing to feed off the host.
To quote George Orwell ‘‘all are equal some are more equal than others’’.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said the new income relief payment of $490 a week was not welfare – it was a temporary payment gave people time for adjustment and to plan their next steps following a ‘‘sharp income drop’’. It seems to me unlike the dole of yesteryear the value of your previous income is being recognised or god forbid there is an acknowledgment the current dole is insufficient in the modern economy.
It is a breakthrough because it’s individualised.
‘‘The Government is creating a twotier welfare system where the newly unemployed receive higher incomes than those on main benefits who live below the poverty line,’’ however it is a slap in the face for the hundreds of thousands of people on a benefit who rely on food grants to survive because their benefits do not cover basic expenses. Thus there is call to permanently increase them to put them at least in line with the income relief payments.’’
Recipients must:
■ Be available for, and actively seeking, suitable work;
■ Engage with suitable work programmes and courses and identify and take opportunities for employment, redeployment and training.
The same as the dole but rarely enforced allowing generational abuse? Look for a new question in the job interview what did you do in the lockdown. Binged watched Netflix is not the correct answer, believe me.
Paul Evans Mcleod, Hamilton