PEEVED PARSONS

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20733, 17 February 1939, Page 8

PEEVED PARSONS

SERVICE OVERSEAB PREVENTS PENSION PAYMENTS (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, Jan. 19 “I have been through bush fires and earthquakes,” said the Rev. H. E. Jones, formerly of New Zealand, reports the special correspondent of the Daily Herald. He sat at a table in the old vestry hall of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. In front of him sat a dozen other men—from the Pacific Islands, from Nigeria, Kenya, the more uncomfortable parts of Canada. Not Eligible They were of different faiths, but they had one thing in common—a grievance. Thousands of missionaries and other wanderers cannot benefit by the pension scheme to which stay-at-homes are entitled. The 1936 Pensions Act says that you cannot qualify for a pension if you have been out of this country during the past ten years. One after another Mr Jones’ companions told their stories. “Sixteen years in Nigeria,” said the Rev. A. 11. Richardson, now a Methodist missioner in the East End. “I had to pay for the upkeep of a son in England. And my pension claim has been turned down.” After 20 Years “After 20 years' foreign and colonial service in France, Canada and New Zealand.” the Rev. Horace Lindsey, of St. Paul’s Vicarage, Luton, told me, “1 come home to find that I'm nonpensionable.” “For nearly nine years while I was in Nigeria,” said the Rev. W. Norcross, Methodist minister, “my wife was paying rates and taxes here in England.'’ A mass meeting is to be organsied. and the Minister of Health will be asked to receive a deputation.