NEXT=OF=KIN PARCELS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 February 1943, Page 3

NEXT=OF=KIN PARCELS

f WORK OF JOINT COUNCIL. PACKING A GIGANTIC TASK. Relative to a recent announcement that the War Cabinet had approved of a grant of £340,500 to the Naiibnhl Patriotic Fund Board to pay the estimated cost of food for New Zealand prisoners of war and various costs relating to nex-of-kin parcels, it is interesting to recall that in 1941 the organisation of the Joint Council of the Order of St. John and the New Zealand Red Cross Society made a remarkably successful public collection under the auspices of the National Patriotic Fund Board for,the needs of sick; wounded and prisoners of war. The* amount collected by the Joint Council was well over half a million pounds. Quite a considerable amount of this sum has been used already for payment for food for prisoners of war,' for wh.ich the Government now takes responsibility for payment.

Thousands of workers of the Joint Council have been engaged from the beginning in packing and' arranging prisoner of war parcels, and censoring and supplementing next-of-kin parcels. The organisation of the Joint Council in New Zealand has been employed on what has been, and still is, a gigantic task. Under the-Geneva ’convention, the Joint Council, as the governing body of the Red Cross in New Zealand, is the recognised agent of the International Red Cross in. Geneva for ' the relief of sick, wounded, and of war.