MILITARY DEFAULTERS

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 270, 10 August 1943, Page 2

MILITARY DEFAULTERS

No Special Education Facilities

"Military defaulters, while in detention, are provided with no educational facilities which would improve their facilities to the disadvantage of servicemen, ’ says the Director of National Service writing in reply to an inquiry by the New Zealand Returned Services Association. “Last year War Cabinet decided that examination facilities were not to be granted to defaulters. Within the camps the inmates are permitted to arrange their own education groups, in order, to keep them occupied during non-working hours. It will be readily understood that such an arrangement is necessary in the interests of the good order and discipline of the camps. All groups are under the constant supervision of the camp administration, and they arc mostly of a religious or cultural nature.” Tlie N.Z.R.S.A. slates that the Prune Minister’s recent assurance that military defaulters still undergoing detention would not be allowed to vote at the coming general election, or to stand ns candidates, litis clarified the. position for tho present, but the Dominion executive committee has decided to renew its representations to the Government that all defaulters from military service should be held in detention till all servicemen who have loyally served their country have been rehabilitated and that they be deprived of civil rights for a period of 10 years.