LEAVE WITH PAY

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23750, 23 September 1942, Page 2

LEAVE WITH PAY

♦ PATRIOTIC FUND SECRETARY PROTEST BY RETURNED SOLDIERS (P.S.S.) AUCKLAND, Sept. 22. Protests against the action of the Auckland Provincial Patriotic Council in granting three months' leave of absence on full pay to the retiring secretary, Mr K. L. Usmar. were made by members of the executive of the Auckland "Returned Services’ Association. Mr Usmar has resigned to take up a position with the national E.P.S. organisation. The executive decided to write to the Patriotic Council asking its members personally to pay the gift of £9O which they had made to the secretary and so relieve the patriotic funds. The president (Mr J. W. Kendal) said Mr Usmar had been secretary both of the council and of the Auckland E.P.S., and was paid two salaries for the two positions, making something more than £l4 a week. He was required by the conditions of his appointment to give three months’ notice of the termination of his engagement, but the council had seen fit to waive that and to give him leave of absence on full pay. That meant a gift to the secretary of about £9O of public money. He was going to another job which was highly paid. When the council was making constant appeals to the public for money for soldiers in the front line and their needy dependants it was gravely wrong to make such a payment. It was agreed to write to other branches of the R.S.A, in the Auckland Province drawing their attention to this decision of the Patriotic Council. . The Mayor (Mr J. A. C. Allum), who is chairman of the Provincial Patriotic Council, later said that in fairness to Mr Usmar it should be staled that before May. 1941, he received no remuneration for his services from the patriotic fund, and throughout his term of service to the council he had worked an extraordinary amount of overtime The grant made to him appeared to be fully justified.