PENSIONERS MEET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 226, 23 August 1945, Page 8

PENSIONERS MEET

ASSOCIATION FORMED.

With the object of obtaining better housing and better pensions, establishing a elubrooin, and arranging social gatherings a representative meeting of about SO old-age, widows and invalidity beneficiaries under the Social Security Act decided to form a Palmerston ‘North Pensioners’ Association on Tuesday. In the absence of the Mayor (Mr Mansford) the meeting electee! Mr L. H. Witherington, of Linton, chairman. The primary idea in forming the association, said Mr W. D. Ayson, president of the Wanganui Pensioners' Association and a member of the executive of the New Zealand Federation, who convened the meeting, was to look after elderly people and their problems. Major concerns were housing and comforts for the sick and needy and the bigger the membership the more weight pensioners’ arguments would carry. Widows, widowers, and persons just over the old-age benefit group, in short, lonely people, came under the section about which the association was most concerned. Older people were not able to attend dances and similar functions where the younger folk congregated, and so that they did not feel as if they were being left out of things it was hoped to organise social gatherings. Many of the older people who had lost their partners in life were forced to rent cheap rooms with inadequate conveniences. The federation maintained that single pensioners should be granted more than half of what two persons were expected to live on. Now that another 7s 6d a week had been given them, rents would probably rise. The Wanganui Association had been aiming at erecting a hostel and single and married persons’ flats on a 4-j-acre site handy to the city. It was maintained that the rent should be 25 per cent, of a pensioner’s pension. This scheme, it was thought, would alleviate the housing problem to some extent, as the vacated rooms would probably be suitable for younger people, who were more able- to bear the hardship. Mr Ayson read a number of demands placed before the Government in 1943 by the New Zealand Federation. Some bad been met, he said, but not to tbe extent desirable. He was opposed to the idea that because a person was oil and unable to produce or'earn he or she should be put in a home. People who had earned the wealth of the country should have a fair share of it.

Mr 11. 11. Blake moved and Mrs Leighton seconded that' the Palmerston No.'th Old Ago, Widow and Invalidity Pensioners’ Association be formed and this motion was carried unanimously. Mr Mansford was elected patron and Mr Witherington president. The following committee was appointed to arrange for the next meeting, at which further officers will be elected: Messrs Gulliver and Dale and Mesdames Iloggard, Witherington and Ram.

Mr 11. Otto, president of the Wanganui Early Settlers’ and Old Folks’ Association, addressed tbe meeting in connection with the proposed establishment of a rest room Tn Palmerston North. He men tioned that bis association was working in conjunction with tbe Pensioners’ Association in Wanganui with a similar object. It would give him great pleasure to see an Early Settlers and Old Folks’ Association inaugurated in Palmerston North, and a rest room started where social gatherings could he held. A member of the audience contended that it was a hardship for most pensioners to pay a doctor his full fee after a visit and then have to wait before reclaiming the money. This put a lot of pensioners out of pocket for a period. Mr Ayson remarked that lie thought pensioners wore likely to get more consideration in the future.