PERSONAL CONTACT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23205, 1 June 1937, Page 14

PERSONAL CONTACT

INTERVIEWS WITH PENSIONERS VISIT OF COMMISSIONER The commissioner of pensions, Mr H. Digby Smith, arrived in Dunedin on Saturday, and spent a busy day yesterday interviewing pensioners. Mr Smith’s visit is the outcome of a suggestion by the Minister in Charge of the Pensions Department (Mr W. E. Parry) that pensioners, and applicants for pensions, should be given the opportunity of discussing personally with the commissioner any matters affecting them, and in the course of his tour of the South Island, he has already visited Blenheim, Kaikoura, Ashburton and Invercargill. Mr Smith stated yesterday that personal contact with pensioners frequently smoothed away difficulties which no amount of correspondence could satisfactorily settle, and in the case of invalid pensions especially, in which a decision lay entirely in his hands, it was of the greatest assistance to have a personal discussion with the pensioner or the applicant. He had found, also, that he had been able to advise regarding the refusal or reduction of a pension, and, in many cases, to render help that could not have been available through ■ the ordinary routine channels. Returned men had been especially eager to discuss pension matters, Mr Smith said. There were always problems cropping up with regard to these pensions, and in a 10 minutes’ chat, he was often able to explain a knotty point or clear up a difficulty, far more satisfactorily than by a departmental or even personal communication. If, of course, he found that the application of the law affected any pensioner harshly, he then placed the case before the Minister, Mr Smith will visit Oamaru to-day and Timaru to-morrow, and will spend Thursday and Friday in Christchurch.