GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17685, 24 July 1919, Page 4

GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE

ALLEGED UNFAIR TREATMENT.

INQUIRY ASKED -FOR.

(Psb United Press Association.) AUCKLAND, July 23.

A petition drawing attention to conditions on transports, particularly _ in regard to women, and to the administration of the military education scheme overseas was signed by over 700 men who returned to New Zealand recently by the Ruahine. This has been forward-sd to the Acting Prime Minister by the Auckland Returned Soldiers' Association, which has investigated the complaints, and has come to the conclusion that they are justified. Not actually in any sense of grievances for which they personally desired < redress do they complain, and not as soldiers, but as taxpayers and citizens who believed that the country was not receiving a satisfactory return for Government expenditure of funds. The petitioners ask for inquiry into the whole question of transporting troops which would clear up the matters mentioned besides the question of the repeated supply of stale, unwholesome, and maggot-infe-sted stores to troops at 6ca. In regard to the education sell?mo complaint is mado that unqualified men were appointed to administer it when highly qualified teachers in the farces were available. In consequence, it is affirmed, the education scheme has become thoroughly discredited among the soldiers. The attendance at classes overseas had eithor ceased or become ludicrously small. ■