READY TO ASSIST

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 224, 21 August 1945, Page 4

READY TO ASSIST

RETURNING PERSONNEL. WELLINGTON, August 21. Hie sudden end of the war finds us more than ready to welcome back all our men and women from overseas and .help them back into civilian life," said the Minister of Rehabilitation (Mr fanner) in a statement last evening. Thanks to New Zealand having started its rehabilitation scheme nearly four years ago, and thanks to the successful decentralisation, we halve a well experienced team of both departmental and voluntary workers anxious to grapple with the task before us. I want to assure the men and women still overseas, wherever they may be, that rehabilitation has become an efficient working part of our national lite, and that most of their problems nave been anticipated and provided tor as far as wartime shortages will permit." It should not be expected that the advent of peace meant more men coming home within the next few months than would have been brought back m any case, said the Minister. JLhe Government was doing its utmost to arrange for whatever shipping could be made available, but shipping was going to be an even greater problem m the immediate future, through the sudden collapse of Japan. "We quite realise that general demobilisation will increase our problems, but it will also in the end provide the solution to the basic problem of manpower shortages," added the Minister. "Housing, for instance, has been the biggest problem of all, but with the return to civil life of thousands of rit men we hope to have not only more skilled building tradesmen, but also more men for work in the bush and the mills, in the coalmines, and on the essential hydro-electric schemes. [ln effect, though we will need many more houses, wo will also ho able to build many more. Timber will always be our chief building material, and we have plenty of it standing in our forests but w ?„ tho men to bring it out and mill it. -