OVERDUE PAY TO TROOPERS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 20 September 1901, Page 4

OVERDUE PAY TO TROOPERS.

(oue parliamentary reporter.)

Wellington, This Day. Farther reference was made in the House yesterday afternoon to the vexed question of the delays that have taken place in paying returned troopers from South Africa the money due to them for their services.

Mr. Allen, in questioning the Premier on the subject, said one man, who had returned helpless, had £SO to come to him and could get nothing, and when passing through Oamoru the other day five men of the Fourth and Fifth Contingents informed him that they had not yet received the pay duo to them. The Premier said no one regretted more than he that there should be any delay at all, but he could not accomplish impossibilities. They had to have the pay-sheets of the men made out before they could pay them. The trouble seemed to have arisen through the men not having been paid in South Africa, and the result was that the Defence Department here had to make out the accounts for months back. He told the Under-Secretary for Defence that where the men had money owing to them advances were to be made to the full amount, and that they could make out the accounts afterwards ; but there was one case in which a man had actually drawn more than was owing to him. He had given instructions that the staff should be kept working overtime until all the accounts had been made out.