FRIENDLY SOCIETY BENEFITS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 204, 29 July 1939, Page 6

FRIENDLY SOCIETY BENEFITS

SOCIAL SECURITY AUGMENTED. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, July 27. AY'ithout altering its fees and scale of payout the Manchester Unity Order of Oddfellows in the Auckland district lias approved of a plan of benefits, which, it is claimed, will strengthen and fill many of the gaps of the social security scheme. There arc 10,000 members each averaging three dependants in the Auckland district, which embraces half of the North Island. A managerial circular to members states that the society will continue its district hospital funds and make cash payments to members for themselves, their wives, or children of the respective amounts that were formerly paid to the hospital authorities for indoor maintenance in public or private hospitals. The effect of tlie decision will be a weekly payment of £1 11s 6d to a member for himself or his wife and 15s 9d for each of his children should they become patients in a public or private hospital in New Zealand. Financial arrangements have been made with the public hospital boards under the social security scheme ior the free maintenance of indoor patients. Provision is also made lor the payment of 6s a day toward the cost of maintenance of patients, in private hospitals. . i The circular points out that the State docs, not provide lor the payment of fees of outdoor patients, but that these will, as formerly, he paid to members out of the district hospital fund in addition to ambulance charges. The circular also refers to the failure of the social security scheme to define tho duration of the weekly sick payment and advises members that the sociotv will pay sick benefits of £1 per I week‘for the first 52 weeks and 10s thereafter, in addition to the cost ol medical attention and medicine included in the usual Friendly Society scheme.