STATE PENSIONS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 71, 17 December 1935, Page 10

STATE PENSIONS

Department’s Work Admired MINISTER’S TRIBUTE “Office Accommodation Inadequate” “If the State pensioners could only see for themselves the very complete and efficient organisation of the department which handles thdir cases 1 am sure they would be very deeply impressed in their satisfaction of it all,” commented the Minister of Pensions, Hon. W. E. Parry, who yesterday afternoon made with the Commissioner of Pensions, Mr. J. H. Boyes, a tour of inspection of the department and an investigation into the working of its functions. “When a man draws his monthly pension allotment,” continued Mr. Parry, “he does not probably think of the tremendous amount of work devolving on the officers of the department with thousands of cases like his own. it was a pleasant surprise to me to see I lie system—a perfect system it is—at work. Any case you might name haphazardly can be found at once and the whole position of it given without any delay at all. The speed at which inquiries—some of them requiring much research —are dealt with and answered excites admiration. I came away from my afternoon’s visit to the Pensions Department feeling that here was a department guided wholly in its heavy work by Acts of Parliament 0 whose administration was very efficient.” Mr. Parry said that the accommodation, allotted the Pensions Department was not at all adequate to the needs of either the department or the public, and that was a matter which he personally would look into. “It is an old saying,” added the Minister, “that you cannot maintain contentment in a staff and a high standard »f efficiency without the necessary and ' proper accommodation. It is the aim of the Government to see its servants properly and comfortably placed in the performance of their duties. Something will have to be done to make conditions much better than they are today in the Pensions Department. “My comment, I regret to say, does not apply only to the Pensions Department; another branch of the State func- • tions under my control, the Department of Internal Affairs, is most inadequately housed, and it will be necessary for me to see what can be done for both these departments.”