GOVERNMENT GRANT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1943, Page 4

GOVERNMENT GRANT

-+ PARCELS FOR PRISONERS -

It has been announced that the War Cabinet has approved of a grantl of £340,500 to the National Patriotic Fund Board to pay the estimated cost of food for New Zealand prisoners of war, and various costs relating to next-of-kin parcels. "In 1941 the organisation of the Joint Council of the Order of St. John and the New Zealand Red Cross Society made a remarkably successful public collection under the auspices of the National Patriotic Fund Board for the needs of sick, wounded, and prli soners of war," says the War Purposes Committee of the Council in a Pfess statement. "The amount collected by the joint council was more than £500,000. A considerable amount of this sum has been used already for payment for food for prisoners of war, for which the Government now takes responsibility for payment. "Thousands of workers of the joint council have been engaged from the beginning in packing and arranging of prisoner of war parcels, and censoring and supplementing next-6f-kin parcels. The organisation of the joint council in New Zealand has been employed on what has been, and still is, a gigantic task. • w. "Under the Geneva convention, the joint council, as the governing body of the Red Cross in New Zealand, is the recognised agent of the International Red Cross in Geneva for the relief of sick, wounded, and prisoners of warl jr