RETURNING MEN

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 289, 4 September 1942, Page 3

RETURNING MEN

Post-War Rehabilitation

Problems ADDRESSES TO AMPUTEES’

CONFERENCE

The large number of New Zealanders now serving with the forces, both in New Zealand and overseas, is going to make rehabilitation and pension problems after this war more extensive and complex than they' were after the last, according to ' the Minister in Charge of AVar Pensions, Mr. Jones, speaking to the third annual conference of delegates of the New Zealand AVar Amputees’ Association in AVellington yesterday. Before his address Mr. Jones heard various suggestions and complaints from the delegates. He assured them that the Government’s interest was to provide the best limbs possible for amputees, and compared to this the cheapness of the limbs was not a consideration. Speaking of pensions, and referring to suggestions that the present system of economic pensions might tend toward men not working, but remaining idle so thdt they could receive the pension, Air. Jones said the more men that could be got off economic pensions into trades the better. The Government must help the young men to do all they could to reestablish themselves, and to fill a useful place in the community. However, the increase in the economic pension had benefited a large number of the .widows and children of soldiers who had died on war service. The Government had made quite a lot of improvements in thy pension laws, Mr. Jones continued, and cited the extension of the laws to the Mercantile Marine. He said the Government had always faced up to the question of what it could do for those who were suffering as a result of either this or the last war. ... It wanted to have rehabilitation plans all prepared to place men usefully when they came buck from this war, Mr. Jones said, mentioning particularly young men who had been taken from industry when they were 18. Altogether there was u very large force in New Zealand which would have to be rehabilitated, and there was also going to be a large pension bill for men serving in New Zealand, Saying that the Government usually took a sympathetic view of the position of soldiers injured in New Zealand, he quoted the case of a soldier who had lost both his legs when he slipped jumping on a train. It was not a war injury, but the Government thought the case ought to receive consideration, and the soldier was given a compassionate grant equal to a war pension. The Government did try to meet some cases of hardship which did not come specially under the AVty Compensation Act, and was always prepared to listen to representations from returned soldiers. Rehabilitation Work. Some indication of what was already being done toward the rehabilitation »f the men who would return was given the conference by the chairman of the National Rehabilitation Board, Mr. M. Moohan, who said that rehabilitation was to ensure that when a man returned from the war he would be at least no worse off than when he went there, and who at the same time pointed out that persons now engaged on war work would find their occupations cease as quickly as the soldiers’ after the war. Detailing some of the types of rehabilitation which would be necessary, Air. Moohan said there would be men who wanted to enter the professions, and for these facilities would be made for them to continue their studies right through to the university free of charge. There would be some who. wanted to take up farming, and arrangements were in preparation for them not only to. become farmers, but to study at the agricultural colleges if they wished. But the largest class of all would be of men who were the wage and salary workers of the Dominion before they entered the services. Facilities were already in existence to teach these men trades, and would be expanded as the situation developed. A fourth class would be disabled nien, said Air. Moohan, who went on to refer to. the disabled soldiers’ training centre which was to be erected in AVelliugtou. and the site of which the delegates later visited. This would, cost, with its grounds £40,000, which was £—o,ooo short of the cost of one bomber. Air. Moohan said he hoped the centre would never be full, but added that if they could find .money for war they had to find it for rehabilitation and reconstruction. He was going to ask the various industries what positions could be found in them for amputees, as it was. bau enough for a man to lose a limb without having to be perpetually placed in a position in civil life inferior to that to which his qualifications would entitle him. , , A common need for all returned soldiers in their sucecssful rehabilitation was a house and reasonably priced tuiniture. Six houses of sem.i-ptefabrieatwl construction were being built at the Hutt now, and the board was conducting a competition to try to. obtain the best possible designs in dining-rooms and bedroom furniture which would be of good quality but reasonably priced. “If the people of the Dominion are as determined to have a worth-while world afterward as they are to win the war, our rehabilitation plans will succeed. concluded Mr. Moohan.