BUSIEST YEAR YET

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 96, 19 February 1947, Page 3

BUSIEST YEAR YET

REHABILITATION AID MINISTER COMMENTS ON 1946 “By far the busiest rehabilitation year so far,” is the comment of the Minister of Rehabilitation, the Hon. C. F. Skinner, in a statement regarding rehabilitation activity during 1946. “In fact there was more money authorised for all rehabilitation purposes in the 12 months preceding December last than in all other years put together.” Illustrating this the Minister said that whereas rehabilitation authorisations totalled £20,274,459 at the end of Decembei’, 1945, they had reached £41,943,338 at the end of the year just past. Financial advances to ex-servicemen and women for the purchase of farms, businesses, furniture, tools of trade, for the

erection and purchase of houses and for miscellaneous other purposes had risen from 21,530 valued at £14,686,264 to 40,935 with a value of £32,387,150. “It was encouraging to note that duing 1946 a large number of exservicemen were able to purchase farm and residential properties,” added Mr Skinner. “For instance by the end of last year 3332 ex-ser-vicemen had received rehabilitation assistance for single unit farms as against 1504 at the same date 12 months previously, while 8234 had bought house properties compared with 4277 at the end of December, 1945. Figures for house building were 5078 and 2101 respectively, the greater increase here probably being the result, to some extent, of the 50 per cent, allocation to exservicemen of timber available for private housing. In the field of State housing, a further 1802 ex-servicemen received allocations during the year, the figure increasing from 4602 to 6404. Altogether, including those placed on farms, 23,048 ex-servicemen had been assisted towards housing in one way or another through the agency of rehabilitation by the end of 1946, as against 12,484 at the same date the year before. Of all other rehabilitation activity the most noticeable increase was in the number of men and women who had taken advantage of the educa-

tional facilities offered. At the end of last year the number was 18,411. At the conclusion of 1945 it was only 3548.

“Encouraging as the progress has been,” concluded the Minister, 'there is still much to be done before we can say that rehabilitation is an accomplished fact. It still behoves everyone who can assist to do so. Indeed it is a duty which no member of the commun-

ity should allow himself to forget. Wherever an opportunity present itself to help an ex : serviceman in his task of establishment, then that opportunity should not be neglected.”