DEPARTMENT REBUFFED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 34, 10 February 1943, Page 4

DEPARTMENT REBUFFED

— ■ HELPING RETURNED MEN A request concerning the gift of grants from the patriotic funds to returned servicemen and demobilised servicewomen caused annoyance, mingled with amusement, at , the meeting of the Auckland Metropolitan Patriotic Committee executive last night. The secretary, Mr. H. Wylie, read communications from the Patriotic Purposes Branch of the Internal Affairs Department and the Repatriation Division of the National Service Department suggesting that every individual patriotic grant should be recorded and dispatched to the appropriate branch of the National Service Department. The servicemen's welfare sub-com-mittee reported that it was considered inexpedient that such information should be supplied, that grants were small in amount and given to. relieve immediate distress. The secretary added that if individual records were to be furnished from the outset they would number 6000. The chairman, Mr. G. W. Hutchison, Lieutenant-Colonel T. H. Dawson and Mr. A. S. Bailey said the system proposed was disgraceful and the question of giving assistance to returned men and women was not a matter to be shouted from the housetops. It was decided to reply in terms of the sub-committee's report.