INCOME LIMIT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1938, Page 6

INCOME LIMIT

UNDER SUPERANNUATION SCHEME PRIME MINISTER FORECASTS INCREASE. CONCESSION TO PUBLIC SERVICE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “The object is to keep driving ahead to make the scheme universal and naturally it has to begin with those who need it most,” said the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon M. J. Savage, in announcing yesterday that public servants and others whose retiring allowances do not exceed £3OO a yeai’ are all to benefit under the Government’s superannuation scheme to be introduced in ' Parliament in its legislative form early in the coming session. Mr Savage said that no details could be given at the present stage, but it was intended to make further payments additional to those under the original proposals, which fixed the maximum allowance at £2OB a year. The extension of the scheme would give something to everyone in the Public Service or elsewhere who re-, tired on superannuation up to a fraction over £3OO. The details had not yet ■ been completed but the payments additional to the original proposals would be graded. For instance, a man on £220 retiring allowance would get more than a man on the £275 mark, ; and the latter would get more than a man on £3OO. The payments would ; taper off. i The Prime Minister described as stu- > pid and unjust the fact that persons > who had joined the Public Service ’ after December 24, 1909, could not draw more than £3OO a year from the [ superannuation funds of the service, ' regardless of the salaries they had ■ been receiving before their retirement. When the Bill was drafted it would provide something for the great bulk of public servants and anybody else ■ whose income did not exceed £3OO on [ retirement. There was nothing to stop > persons from drawing a retiring allow- . ance from, say, a local body, or insur- • ance company fund, and drawing as well the additional payment from the ‘ State fund to make a total up to £3OO ; a year. Mr Savage said critics of the scheme I complained on the one hand that it was II already too costly and on the other that it was not universal. “To make it universal would add some millions to the cost and we cannot get millions " out of the atmosphere,” he added.