’QUAKE PAYMENTS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 304, 8 December 1931, Page 7

’QUAKE PAYMENTS

EXPENSES FOB DWELLING REPAIRS. £32,000 NOW BEING PAID OUT. During the week the Public Trust offices in Napier and Hastings will pay out a sum of £32,284 in payment of claims for the repair of earthquake damage to dwellings. The payments are being made only by way of reimbursement to those people who paid out of their own pockets for repairs, and who are now claiming for reimbursement. Napier claimants will receive a total sum of £17,671,. Hastings claimants £10,082, Waipukurau claimants £1829, Hawke’s Bay County claimants £2319, and Waipawa claimants £383. The number and amount of claims made by Wairoa residents Is not at present available. In Napier there are 720 claimants, in Hastings and Havelock North 715, in the county 148, and in Waipawa 17. The number of claims from Waipukurau is indefinite at present. From 9.30 o’clock this morning there was a steady stream of applicants at the Hastings branch of tho Public Trust Office, and the staff were kept extremely busy, as is likely to be the case throughout tho next week. The office was engaged up till a late hour last evening concluding the details of each claim, and preparing cheques for payment. To deal with over 700 claims within seven days will involve a great deal of work, and i. says much for the efficiency and loyalty of the staff of the local branch of the Public Trust Office that they have done this work, and much other earthquake work besides, without the addition ci even one clerk to their pieviously existing staff. Among ether duties that; the staff has had to perform has been the collation and settlement of claims for over £20,000 in connection with goods commandeered after tho earthquake, the preparation of claims bv widows, bereaved families, and the incapacitated, and, in a large part, the handling of the work for some time performed by the Hastings Reconstruction Committee. To have carried on the ordinary duties of the office, and to have done so much earthquake work besides, is no small feat. The payments that are now being made out, at least so far as Hastings is concerned, range from £1 to £lOO, and tho putting into circulation of so much money among residents of this town and its neighbourhood will without doubt make its effect felt on Christmas trade and holiday traffic. There has bepn no definite notification made so far with regard to the payment of pensions to widows and other bereaved persons and to the incapacitated. All the particulars in connection with claims of that kind are still under consideration by the Central Relief Committee, whoso decision and approval must first be given before any payments can be made.