DISABLED SOLDIERS

Otago Witness, Issue 3429, 2 December 1919, Page 52

DISABLED SOLDIERS

QUESTION OF PERMANENT RELIEF. WELLINGTON, November 28.

The dispensation of permanent relief to permanently disabled returned soldiers was discussed at a meeting of the Wellington War Relief Association to-day. The Chairman said he thought it would be advisable to hold a special meeting of the Patriotic Societies' Advisory Board early in the year to discuss some scheme, preferably a dominion scheme, for giving special aid to permanently disabled men. Ho mentioned as one of the difficulties in such a proposal that some permanently disabled men were earning more money than they ever earned before, and thsse man were not urder any economic disability. Mr Hutcheson said he thought it was deplorable that at this time there should bo a piecemeal treatment of this problem. There ought to bo no such parochialism in distributing the residue of funds. There should be no regard to the special circumstances of some districts, which, perhaps, had large funds and light claims. _ There should be a dominion scheme, and it should be formulated by the representative conference in which the Government should take part,'and the conference should call to its aid the best expert assistance—medical and otherwise - obtainable in the country. He. did riot think the Patriotic Advisory Board would be the proper body to deal with this problem. Mr Luke said it was almost inconceivable that relief should be carried on as at.present for a period of 15" years or more, for many itK'ii would require assistance for as long a period as this. He had always contemplated a time when there would be a "washup," and he thought the best method would be an amalgamation .of the funds and the adoption of a scale of relief for permanently disabled men. In the'course of further discussion it was pointed out that there was machinery at p-esent f6r the Government to exercise a measure of control over the funds, and that the residue of such funds as those 'for Red Cross purposes would probably como into a common fund for the scheme suggested, but there was in the minds of-mem-bers considerable doubt about the willingness of other societies to agree to the Wellington oroposal, however proper it might be- ■ ' ' Eventually it was decided that a special committee should be set up to consider all cases of permanent or semi-permanent disability.