SOCIAL SECURITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 March 1939, Page 6

SOCIAL SECURITY

NEW DEPARTMENTAL OFFICES IN MASTERTON. OPEN FOR BUSINESS PROBABLY NEXT WEEK. The Social Security Department. Masterton. which will be located in the old Technical School building, Dixon Street, is expected to be opened for business next week. The Registrar, Mr J. L. L. Wood, has arrived in Masterton and is at present engaged in preliminary organisation work. A staff of eleven probably will be necessary to deal with the activities of the department at this centre. The Masterton office will handle all Social Security' business in the area eastward of the main divide from the Hawke’s Bay provincial boundary to Palliser Bay. Although the new department will open next week, no payments will be made until April, when the whole scheme actually' comes into operation, but applications for benefits etc., will be received at the office meantime. The new department will take over all former civil pensions, and all monetary benefits and sustenance, employment and sickness payments will be made at this office (after April 1) instead of at the Post Office as formerly. The- benefits eipbraced by trie scheme include age, widows, invalidity', family, orphans, employment, sickness, emergency, miners and Maori war. War pensions and war veterans' allowances will also be paid at the Social Security office. The Employment Division will in future be located at the new office but for the present the State Placement. Service, although attached to the 'Social Security Department, will remain in its present quarters in the Arcade.

The payment of quarterly levies and registrations under the Social Security Act will be made at the Post Office, as hitherto.