REHABILITATION PLANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 January 1943, Page 4

REHABILITATION PLANS

STATEMENT BY MR SEMPLE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. A comprehensive statement on the Government’s rehabilitation plans was released this morning by the Minister of National Service (Mr Semple). The Rehabilitation Act passed in 1941 provided administrative machinery, he said. It also envisaged the handling of a gigantic problem of post-war economic and social reconstruction. The Government had not set up a special department, but had taken the view that the services of all ’existing State departments and other organisations that would be of any value should be harnessed under a general plan. However the administrative dovetailing of the work of interested departments and organisations had been provided for. This had been achieved by constituting the Rehabilition Division of the National Service Department as an administrative secretariat, directly responsible to the Rehabilitation Board, with district rehabilitation officers acting as local committee secretaries. Thereby any aspect affecting the case of any exService man would come to the notice of a rehabilitation officer, who would call on the appropriate department or organisation for the assistance needed. The war situation, together with the unpredictability of farming conditions in the immediate post-war period, had necessarily delayed an announcement of farm settlement measures for exservice men, the Minister stated. Much research work had been done, however, and as soon as possible details of the scheme worked out would be announced. LOANS TO DATE. Loans to ex-Service men by the State Advances Corporation for the purchase of houses, furniture and tools of trade, business and farms, totalled £227,808 for the whole of the Dominion up to the end of December. The Dominion total of applications authorised was 641, apart from loans through the corporation, to erect or purchase private dwellings. Plans for a vast State housing scheme, involving the erection of at least 16,000 houses a year, had been formulated. Equally ambitious plans for the manufacture of furniture with which to equip the dwellings erected had been made.