PAY-OUT DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1937, Page 10

PAY-OUT DAY.

STATE PENSIONS. AUCKLAND FACILITIES. VISIT BY MINISTER. State pensioners throughout the Dominion were paid their pensions to-day —two days earlier in ffie month than usual. The arrangement was made by the Minister of Pensions, the Hon. W. E. Parry, to enable pensioners to receive the amounts due to them in advance of the holidays, and to prevent congestion at the paying-out offices at a time when officers are preparing for the end of the year clean-up of their books. All morning there was a steady stream of men and women to the Pensions Office, and an interested visitor to the office was Mr. Parry. "Though I had visited the building," the Minister said, "when it was being adapted to the needs of the pensions office, this is the first time I have had an opportunity of being present on a paying-out day. "The arrangements made for the ] pensioners seem to meet requirements and enables the work to be coped with expeditiously. One or two facilities have yet to be provided for the staff. A great convenience for elderly and infirm pensioners would be for them to have no steps at all to negotiate, but when tli? expansion of Posi. and Telegraph business made i( necessary for the Pensions Department to leave the Welleslev Street Poi*t. Office buildinjr. the present premises of the Department were all the suitable accommodation that was available." Mr. Parry said he wanted to see the conditions made as favourable as possible for the old people, and wherever new Government buildings were being established in New Zealand it was his aim to get a permanent home for the Pensions Office.