NEW CLASS TO RECEIVE BENEFITS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22435, 23 June 1938, Page 12

NEW CLASS TO RECEIVE BENEFITS

PERSONS RETIRING ON UP TO £3OO A YEAR (PRESS ASSOCIATION TELSGRAII.) WELLINGTON, June 22. Public servants and others whose retiring allowances do not exceed £3OO a year are all to benefit under the Government’s superannuation scheme, which will be introduced in Parliament in its legislative form early in the coming session. ' This enlargement of the-original scheme was explained hy the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage), who said that there would not be a great number of public servants or otiiers not drawing something under the scheme. No details could be given at present, •said Mr Savage, but it was intended to make further payments additional to those under the original proposals, which fixed the . maximum allowance at £2OB a year. The extension of the scheme would give something to everyone in the public service or elsewhere who retired on a superannuation up to a fraction more than £3OO. The details had not yet been completed, but the payments additional to the original proposals would be graded. For instance, a man on a £220 retiring allowance would get more than a man on the £275 mark, and the latter would get more than a man on £3OO, The payments would taper off. Mr Savage described as stupid and unjust the fact that .persons who had joined the public service after De cember 24, 1909, could not draw more than £3OO a year from the superannuation funds of the service, regardless of the salaries they had been receiving nefore their retirement. When the bill was drafted, it would provide something for the great bulk of public servants, and anybody else whose income did not exceed £3OO on retirement.

There was nothing to stop persons from drawing a retiring allowance from, say, a local body or insurance company fund, and drawing as well the additional payment from the State fund to make the total up to £3OO a year. J “The idea is that we have to make the thing universal as rapidly as possible, and in the meantime to give a greater lift to those on smaller incomes,” said Mr Savage. “That is really what is wrong with the world to-day —small incomes.”