REPLACING PENSIONS?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 773, 20 September 1929, Page 16

REPLACING PENSIONS?

INQUIRY ON TRAINING OF DISABLED MEN “DIFFICULT PROBLEM” _ To the executive of the Auckland * Provincial Patriotic and War Relief Association yesterday afternoon, the chairman, Sir James Gunson, presented a report on tho commission appointed to find means of training and work for partially disabled soldiers, to enable them to do without the economic pension. Tho commission was appointed by the Minister in Charge of War Pensions. The report mentioned that a request had been made to organisations concerned to appoint their representatives, one to act on behalf of the Returned Soldiers’ Association and the Canteen Funds Trust Board, and the other for the War Funds Council and tho Red Cross societies. The underlying purpose of the inquiry was taken to mean consideration of the advisability of rescinding economic pensions, and to establish instead an institution or institutions In which ex-service men could receive suitable help to employment. The proposal might go the length of agricultural training. Such a policy was in force during a period immediately following the war,’* the report remarked. “It was discontinued through difficulties. There are difficulties in the way of any practical scheme. Anything of such a character will take us back to the c ork of the Repatriation Department, under subsidies with employers, and the establishment of separate workshop units in occupations. If the committee can assist toward settlement of a difficult problem, it will do so.”

The Auckland representatives on the National War Funds Council, Sir James Gunson and Mr. V. J. Darner, havo supported the proposal that Sir John Luke should represent the council on the commission.