Dole plan
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GREATER Manchester Council is seeking Government approval of its plans to provide concessionary season tickets to the unemployed.
It wants to provide Greater Manchester Transport SaverSeven season tickets for either £1, £1.50, or £2 per week for the 170,000 unemployed in the county, 21 per cent of whom are under 21 and over 20 per cent of whom have been unemployed for over a year.
The potential cost of providing these concessions would be somewhere between £4.35m and £8.67m, depending on which fare is charged, and GMC is concerned to establish that its scheme is legal before it starts selling the tickets.
A cheaper scheme, limited to the under 20s, would cost only about £2.5m if the tickets were sold for £1 each.
An exploratory meeting was arranged for last week between Labour MP Alf Morris, representing GMC, and Junior Transport Minister Reg Eyre, to establish whether exiting legislation would permit such a scheme, and other North-west England MPs are being lobbied on the plan.
GMC believes that the number of unemployed could be reduced by such a scheme, as people would be better able to travel to interviews in the county.