WAR PENSIONS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 114, 7 February 1919, Page 4

WAR PENSIONS

AN AVALANCHE OF CLAIMS.

The Pensions Department has been deluged ■' with applications in the past month, 3547 applications from soldiers having been received between January 4 and January 31. Such an avalanche of applications has never before come into-the.office, fov the rate three ■ months "ago was about 350 _ a month. The reason for the sudden increase is the greater number of men rertunrin°- now. Of course, the Pensions Board, although it is sitting morning, noon, and night, is not able to deal with these applications as soon as they are received, but it must not be supposed that the applicants are kept waiting without funds. There is provision in <.he law now for the payment of a provisional pension while a case is pending. If Q soldier has the certificate of a medical board that he is entitled lo a pension Hie Commissioner of Pensions has authority to pay him a provisional pension at the fixed rate of thirty shillings a week. If when the board has considered the case the man should bo awarded the full pension for total disablement, the amount is made lip as from the time the payment of the provisional pension began.' If on the other hand the board reduces the pension to, say, a pound a week, the man is not called upon to refund any of tho moneys he has reAnother startling fact about the recent pension figures is the large increase in the number of applications for pensions from dependants of foldiers. It would hardly'have been expected that it would have been woks after the ond of the war before the largest number of these claims was received in the office, but this has been the case. Recently 285 claims were received in one 'week, and nothing like two hundred had ever nre--1 viously been received in a week. The cause of the rush of applications was the heavy casualty roll in the laet fighting in which the New Zealanders were 'engaged, just before the crumbling of the German defence.