£300,000 GRANT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 47, 12 February 1943, Page 3

£300,000 GRANT

FOOD FOR PRISONERS AUTHORISED BY WAR CABINET It has been announced that the War Cabinet lias approved of a grant of £340,500' to the National Patriotic Fund Board to pay the estimated cost of for New Zealand prisoners of war and; various costs relating to next-of-kin parcels.

It will be remembered that in 1941 the organisation of the Joint Council of the Order of St. John and the Ncaa t Zealand Red Cross Society made a remarkably successful public collection under the auspices of the National Patriotic Fund Board for the needs of sick, Abounded and prisoners of Avar. The amount collected by the joint council AA r as well OA r er half a million pounds. Quite a considerable amount of this sum has been used a!ready for payment. for food for prisoners of war for which the Government now takes responsibility for payment.

Thousands of workers of the Joint Council have been engaged from the beginning in packing and arranging prisoner of Avar parcels, and censoring and supplementing next-of-kin parcels. The organisation of the Joint Council in Ncav Zealand has been employed on what has been, and -still is, a gigantic task.

Under the. Geneva Convention, the Joint Council, as the governing body of the Red Cross in NeAV Zealand, is the recognised agent of >the International Red Cross in Geneva for the. relief of sick, wounded and prisoner of war.