Page 4 Advertisements Column 5

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 155, 12 July 1901, Page 4

lii the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Mr Pirani, referring to the Government Accident lusurancc Department, said that a firm in his district had in the past been able to insure their employees for 24 hours a day for 12s per ifelOO, and latterly for eight hours for 3s 4d per .£IOO. The other day, however, they received a communication from a private insurance oflieo to the effect that arrangements had been made with the Government Insurance Office in the colony by which the rates were raised to £1 per £IOO, the effect of the Workers’ Compensation for Accidents Act being the reason given. Such a combination, if it really existed, was the very thing Parliament had endeavored to prevent by bringing the State Department into existence. The Premier deprecated such allegations being made, and questions founded on them. The matter got into the newspapers, and the effect was to prejudice those connected with the Department. He was not going to be held responsible for what any rival companies might have said. There was no combination between the Government Insurance Department and any other company, and his instructions to the Department were to fix its own rates. Last week Mr E. Haigb, of Greytown, met with rather a painful aceidet whilst shooting pea-rifle bullets out of a pistol, one of the bullets being discharged into the palm of his hand.