£2,500,000 FUND

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 234, 30 June 1944, Page 4

£2,500,000 FUND

After-Care Of Returned Servicemen N.Z.R.S.A. DECISION A decision that a Dominion total of at least £2,000,00, plus realizations, be provided for after-care of returned servicemen was made by the R.S.A. Dominion council conference in Wellington yesterday. Mr. G. A. Hayden, detailing the proposal, said that. £2,500,000 was the absolute minimum, of which realization of National Patriotic Fund Board assets would provide approximately £500,000, such a fund to be administered by the board’s provincial councils on which the R.S.A. was represented. / After the Great War £1,500,000 was provided for after-care. There was £400.000 of this left. There was no War Pensions Board or economic pension till 1923, and the greater proportion of the £1,500.000 had been spent by then. There were two special reasons why the after-care fund for this war should be greater. There was the relative value of the pound and the drop in the interest rate from 41 per cent, to 3 per cent. Another most urgent problem would be that of 18-year-olds who undertook service with no training, or very little, in a civil occupation. Certainly the Government would pay them £5 a week during their trades or other training, but some were liable to be very unsettled and restlessly moving from job to job. In many cases they would be calls on the funds. There were few Air Force men after the last war. Now there were more New Zealanders serving in this arm, all over the world, than there were in the Second Division, 2nd N.Z.E.F,. overseas. Some were group captains and wing commanders at 23 or 24. There were hundreds of squadron leaders and flight lieutenant?. In tbe higher ranks were men who drew up to £lOOO a year, tax free. Unfortunately they lived, and died, too, at a very high rate. The Great War expression of a champagne taste on a beer income would apply very much to some of these air personnel. Many would have to be understandingly nursed in their rehabilitation into civilian life. The calls on the fund in the first few post-war years might not be many, but in the years ahead of that period, the fund would be most necessary. Delegates should see that it was not frittered away in the first few years.