WAR PENSIONS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5596, 24 March 1943, Page 3

WAR PENSIONS

PROBLEM OF APPEALS THE SYSTEM AND DELAYS To cope with increasing work the War Pensions Appeal Board, now in Auckland, has decided to take eight cases daily from Monday to Friday, instead of six, and to sit on Saturdays when it will deal with five claims. Mr R. Mason, secretary of the Auckland Returned Services Association, who acts as an advocate for appellants, states that this increase in the pressure of the board’s business causes serious inconvenience, particularly to men from the country and makes it impossible for adequate preparation to be made for the presentation of eases. The association has asked that the agenda be amended and the former number of cases daily be reverted to. It has long been the opinion of many ex-soldiers that a board should be located permanently .in Auckland. Under the new system appellants, all more or less unfit, have to endure longer periods of waiting in a comfortless room and their travelling arrangements are interfered with. The Dominion president of the Second N.Z.E.F. Association, Mr E. L. Thwaites, who acts as advocate for many of the soldiers of the present war, is in entire agreement with Mr Mason that too many cases are now being dealt with daily. At the same time, he stated, it was important that the board should keep abreast of its work, seeing that appellants w’hose cases could not be dealt with in a sitting lasting five or six weeks, had to wait three months for a decision and suffer financial embarrassment in most cases. REASON FOR MASS APPEALS “The fact that there are so many appeals,” he said, “reveals the faults of the system. Practically all pensioners of the Second N.Z.E.F. have to take their cases before the Appeal Board which by the system is the real board of review. The full pension which is usually granted for a brief period upon discharge is crft down by the Pensions Board in Wellington without the soldier being seen by a doctor. He is reboarded ‘on the file.’ “There was the case of a man whose pension was cut to 10s a week simply because the doctor at the original grading had assumed he would be recovered by six months. When he made his appeal he was still using two walking sticks and could not climb the stairs. His full pension was restored, Out he and his family had suffered great hardship in the interim. ASSOCIATION’S REQUEST “No civilian organisation concerned with compensation of injuries would for a moment countenance such a slip-shod procedure,” said Mr Thwaites. “The Second N.Z.E.F. Association has submitted to the Government proposals for a soldiers’ compensation bill under which there would be an independent Pensions Board for each district administering its work after the manner of a Supreme Court. Army doctors would be required to give evidence on oath and be subject to cross-examination and applicants would be entitled to bring evidence in rebuttal of their evidence. Such a tribunal would eliminate the great majority of the appeals.” The arbitrary method of cutting down pensions originally granted forced soldiers to appeal, though some in disgust refused to do so, and the Appeal Board was made the real tribunal, Mr Thwaites added. But it did not now have time to deal with the press -of cases and when the men returned in large numbers the position would be chaotic unless the system were changed.