DISABLED SOLDIERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25562, 15 June 1944, Page 4

DISABLED SOLDIERS

TRAINING FOR INDUSTRY TRIBUTE TO RE-ESTABLISHMENT LEAGUE (P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 14. Placing disabled servicemen into worthwhile industry after training, instead of keeping them in the centres of the league, should be the aim of rehabilitation, said the Minister in Charge of Rehabilitation, Mr C. F. Skinner, when he opened the annual conference to-day of the Disabled Servicemen’s Re-establishment League. He praised the work of, the training centres operated by the league, but said that as the result of a careful survey at present being made to find openings for disabled men, he hoped that five years after the war those centres would have very few men in them. The Minister paid a tribute to the work of the league in its assistance to the rehabilitation authorities. Those interested in the scheme had been working under the handicap of a lack of public sympathy and understanding and possibly a lack of effective assistance from the Government. The work in the various training centres operated by the league compared more than favourably with any similar work in the ordinary commercial field. It filled a very definite place in the rehabilitation scheme by training men whom it would otherwise be very difficult to replace in the ordinary commercial world. The object should be to allow men to take their place in the ordinary economic life of the country. The Government would assist in the establishment of training centres in other parts of New Zealand wherever necessary. The rehabilitation of disabled men was most difficult and most important. , , , .... Speaking of the work of rehabilitation, Mr Skinner said there was room for a good deal of improvement in the matter of artificial limbs. New Zealand had not had the same ready access to the latest developments m orthopaedic work as Britain and had to catch up. Investigations in the United States and Britain were being reported on, and he gave an assurance that New Zealand men would get work equal to the best in any part of the world. He indicated that .meanwhile New Zealand was more fortunate in regard to the actual supply of limbs than some other countries, where men were having to wait owing to a lack of skilled personnel in the work. Experts said that no man was too badly disabled to be trained for work, the Minister added, and big firms had already offered to take as many disabled servicemen as possible. The most difficult cases would be those of men who were not only physically, but mentally disabled. The Director of Rehabilitation, MF Baker, who also spoke, said it was noticeable to him in-greeting returning groups of wounded, particularly from the Middle East, that the number of men permanently disabled seemed to be increasing. This was no doubt due to fighting in enclosed country and towns where mines and booby traps could be better concealed than in desert warfare.