SEPARATION ALLOWANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 February 1916, Page 3

SEPARATION ALLOWANCE.

NEW. ZEALAND RATE COMPARATIVELY LOW. EXPLANATION BY DEFENCE MINISTER. (From Our Own Correspondent). Wellington, February 18. A point that has been raised frequently of late in connection with the call fsr recruits is the comparatively small separation allowance allowed to the wive* of married soldiers by the New Zealand Defence Department. The Australian separation allowance is Is 5d per day for the wife and 4y 2 d per day for each child. South Africa provides 14s 7d per week for a wife, 19s lOd per week lor a wife and one child, and so on up to a maximum of £1 15s per week for a wife and four children. Canada pays 20 dollars a month, or roughly £1 a week, to the wife of the married private. The New Zealand separation allowance is Is a day, or 7s a week, for the wife, with nothing at all for children.

Tims a private's wife with two children would receive,; as separation allowance, 25s per week in South Africa, 20a per week in Canada, los 2d per week in Australia and 7s per week in New Zealand. This amount, in each case, would be over and above any allocation made by the soldier from his pay. The rates of pay show some variation, but the wife who receives, say, two-thirds of her husbanr's pay appears to be worse off in Xew Zealand than in artf other Dominion.

"Y\ e are putting our money into pensions," said the Minister for Defence when this matter wag mentioned to him by a reported. "We have thought it preferable to make better provision for pendens than to establish very high rates of pay. It hag to be ■ remembered that the Xew Zealand Dofenen Department's appeal for recruits lias been, and is still, directed specially to the single men without dependents. We don't want at this stage to offer special inducements to married men. I may say, too, that we don't want men to get married simply in order to avoid going to the front."