Plea For Pensions In Proportion To Basic Wage Rates

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22916, 7 April 1949, Page 4

Plea For Pensions In Proportion To Basic Wage Rates

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, April, 7. “I will not let you down in the eventide of life.” After making this nuotation from the late Mr. M. J. Savage, Mr. E. Mulvanah, of Napier, said to a gathering of age beneficiaries in Wellington last night: “I don’t know what he would think if lie were here today. Those that have followed him have let us down very badly.

The meeting was a public one, but the majority of those present—about 80 —were age beneficiaries. The outcome was the passing of three resolutions seeking an increase in the old-age benefit.

The old-age beneficiaries were the only people in New Zealand who were being robbed of the social-security benefits that Mr. Savage had said would be everybody’s benefit, said Mr. Mulvanah. The possibility of a demonstration being organised to aid their cause was mentioned by Mr. Mulvanah. "I hope we will stand in mass force on the steos of Parliament and make the Prime Minister come out. Then let us demand that this position shall not continue.” He said that with the rising cost of living the £2 5s old-age benefit was entirely insufficient. Cast-off Clothing The benefit was not- enough to keep the aged decently fed, particularly with the high rents being paid for rooms, said the president of the Wellington Old-age Beneficiaries’ Association, Mrs. F. McComish. It was wrong that they should have to go to jumble sales and to second-hand shops to buy the castoff clothes of others. The resolutions urged that the Cabinet immediately consider increasing the weekly allowance. The meeting considered that the social-security benefits were unrelated to any permanent standards of - value and urged upon the Government the advisability to relate the benefits to some set proportion of the basic wage as pronounced by the Court of Arbitration, rising and falling to its decrees.

Copies of the resolutions are to be sent to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the -Minister of Social’ Security.

The president of the Wellington' Housewives’ Association, Mrs. F. F.. Gilmore, presided at the meeting.