WAR PENSION'S BOARD.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1916, Page 8

WAR PENSION'S BOARD.

WORK INCREASING,

(From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Feb. 21

Tlic work of the War Pensions Board grows rapidly. The members of the Board arranged originally to meet every Tuesday to consider any claims that might have come to hand. Occasionally t'hoy would find it necessary to meet again for a" hour or two on the following day to complete the week's business. But the claims are coming to hand in large numbers now, and the meeting that began last Tuesday continued right through the week. The Commissioner of Pensions will scarcely have cleared up the work before the" new wcek> sitting commences to-morrow. Probably the authorities will find it necessary in the future to create a special branch of the Pensions Department to administer t'iie War Pensions Act. Very many of the most seriously wounded men, including the majority of those who have lost limbs, have not yet returned to New ZoZaland, a nd their claims for pensions, for themselves and their dependants, will not reach t'he Board until they have returned to the Dominion and received their discharges. There is reason to believe, for all that, that the. cost of the war pensions scheme is. not- going to be as great as was originally estimated, in spite of the extraordinarily heavy casualties in Gallipoli. .