DETENTION CAMPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1943, Page 4

DETENTION CAMPS

minister on complaints BY OVERSEERS. REFERRED TO PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSIONER. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Referring on Saturday to letters re? ported to have been sent to the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Holland, and the Leader of the Democratic Labour Party, Mr Lee, by several overseers at the Whitanui and Piako defaulters’ detention camps, the Minister of Justice, Mr Mason, who is in charge of detention camps, said it was the function of the Public Service Commissioner to attend to all details relating to the smooth working of the administration and the establishment of harmonious relationships between individual officers.

“The first complaint of any description that has reached me and professed to be made on behalf of the overseers was a call at my office by one of them on Friday evening, shortly before 5 o'clock,” said Mr Mason. “I at once arranged for the spokesman to interview the Public Service Commissioner and to see that the overseers had the opportunity of fully explaining their complaints in that quarter, where, so far as they are found to be real, effectual arrangements can be made to avoid a continuance of any genuine source of grievance.” Mr Mason added that the Public Service Commissioner had by statute very wide powers of securing evidence and prosecuting inquiries.