Report to the ... Zionist Congress and to the Council of the Jewish Agency in ... · 1935-08-01 · 8.1935 · p. Seite 469

over £6,000 has been recommended as against the £20,000 claimed. The total amount of grants, annual and capital, to medical institutions included in the estimates for the current financial year is understood to be in the neighbourhood of £22,000 as against £9,500 in the previous year. 6. The Executive made special representations to the Government for action on their part to control the malaria situation, which assumed threatening proportions in some regions. It supported the Jewish Health Council in its requests for urgent drainage works to be executed by the Government. Some of these works were carried out and helped to ease the situation. The Executive supported the plea of the Hedera Local Council for a special grant from the Revenue to cover part of the special expenditure they had to incur in combating malaria. 7. Grants from the Government continued to be received for the Agricultural Experiment Station of the Jewish Agency. For the year 1934-35 an increase of £3,000 on the previous annual grant of £3,600 was claimed. The increase obtained was £1,850. For the current financial year the claim was for a total amount of £9,450 and the total amount received is £6,550, representing an increase of £1,100 on the previous year. In 1934 the High Commissioner was pleased to give a personal donation to the Experimental Station, which served for the establishment of a chemical laboratory. VII.—Public Works. 1. In the Report presented to the 18th Zionist Congress account was rendered of the negotiations which had been conducted with the Government for the purpose of determining the share of Jewish labour in public works in order to give effect to the undertaking contained in this regard in the Prime Minister's letter to Dr. Weizmann. This share was eventually fixed by the High Commissioner at 30 per cent, to 33 per cent, of the total wage bill for the year 1933-34. According to official figures, however, it appeared that only 21 per cent.- of the wage bill actually went to Jewish labour during the nine months of April to December 1933, while the proportion of man-days worked by Jews did not amount to 10 per cent, of the total. The Government's Annual Report for 1933 justified the deficiency in the following terms.: The percentage in respect of Jewish labour had not reached the predetermined allocation at the end of the period in question. The reason for this was the considerable building activity in Tel-Aviv and Haifa which attracted Jewish labour. Jews did not, therefore, offer themselves readily for employment on public works, particularly as the Public Works Department could not, without increasing its expenditure on labour unwarrantably, pay the rates enjoyed on private Jewish works by skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled Jewish labour. This pre-occupation of Jewish labour in Jewish works is illustrated by the circumstance that the General Federation of Jewish Labour was invited on thirteen occasions to tender for Government works but, save in a single case, abstained from tendering. 469