“MUST BE CHANGED”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21504, 8 September 1944, Page 5

“MUST BE CHANGED”

REHABILITATION POLICY MR. R. LEVIEN'S ADVICE (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Sept. 8. Addressing the Wellington branch of (lie New Zealand Home Servicemen's Association on Wednesday night, Mr. R. Levien, the Dominion president, said that the whole policy of rehabilitation must be changed and the administration must be im ■ proved out of sight. There was every respect for the Public Service, he said, but their training was not along lines of rehabilitation. Most of it was handled where money was concerned by the State Advances Department. That was a Government lending department, and full security was demanded in all its transactions. In rehabilitation a 50-50 chance of getting the money back should be considered good, and a chance must bo taken on a 20-80 basis. It could not be done with Government departments, with their training to safeguard the public money.

"We have undertaken to do a job and we have accepted a responsibility we cannot lay down,” he said. “Wo have a duty to those with us now, but there is a bigger duty to those yet to come out of the services. They have had longer service and a greater disruption of their lives, and we have an enormous duty to them. We have done what service was required of us. We were, unfortunately, not taken overseas, but we must provide a friendly country for those men who went overseas. We must help the quick rehabilitation of the overseas men with our own men.”

He spoke of the need for complete organisation of the association, pointing out that there was a potential membership of about 60,000. There was a particular need to have the organisation ready for these men and women yet to be discharged. He urged the necessity for keeping the organisation elastic that it might grow quickly. "We must go ahead and we must move quickly,” he said.