OLD AGE PENSIONS.

Southland Times, Issue 18983, 18 November 1920, Page 2

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

To ihe Editor. Sir, —Will you kindly allow space in your valued paper regarding the above. I notice that while the Government has been good enough to make extra provision for those who have, property’, as well as those who are still young and able enough to work and so add to their pensions, they have altogether neglected to increase the weekly amount of 15s received by those who are incapacitated for work through old age or illness, and who, being otherwise entirely destitute, must live on this weekly pittance. So far as I can gather, the pension was originally Ids per week, but was afterwards increased by a bonus of 5s per week, to meet the enhanced prices at which the necessaries of life were then being retailed. Now a kind and generous Government has just been good enough to incorporate the Bonus with the original 10s, thus leaving the indigent pensioner in rereceipt of a similar weekly amount as before, although the cost of living ha? steadily gone up since the bonus was given. These-poor old people have been struggling bravely along, hoping and believing that relief was at hand, and the result just arrived at must be a sore disappointment to them. It put? me in mind of the man who tried to feed hi? horse on less and less every hay, hoping in time it would do without food altogether, until one morning be went to the stable to find his horse dead. The Government say they must cut the coat according to the cloth, but as far as I can remember there was plenty of cloth when they voted an increase of £2OO each to the honorarium? of honourable members. I have always understood that the higher the state of civilisation of people, the more they protected and looked after their old and helpless. What about New Zealand? The bulk of the old age pensioners 1 refer to probably arrived in the very’ early days and went through all the hardships inseparable from the colonisation of a new country, thus paving the way' for those comforts which we who followed are now enjoying. Some of the early immigrants have prospered, while others, through no fault of their own, are left, old, helpless and destitute, and it is dearly the duty of the State to see that they are provided for, at least with comfort. —I am, etc., A SYMPATHISER. November 17,