RAILWAY SUPERANNUATION SCHEME.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8529, 6 September 1907, Page 5

RAILWAY SUPERANNUATION SCHEME.

ANNUAL PAYMENT TO WIDOWS.

(From Our Parliamentary Corres-

pondent.)

WELLINGTON, September 5.

In the House of Representatives,. Mr f Stallworthy asked the ActingMinister for Railways, what deductions are made from the annual payments to widows under the Railways superannuation scheme that reduce the amount paid to them from £lB to £l7 18s 7d, as stated in the report of the Superannuation Board; snd whether he does not think that the full amount receivable by widows without children under thu superannuation scheme should be paid to them without deductions?

Sir J. G. Ward replied:—Payments made to widows under the Government Railways Superannuation Fund have to be made four-weekly under sub-section (5) of section] 6 of the Government Railways Superannuation Fund Act, therefore thirteen four-weekly payments are made in the course of every year, and this practically leaves at the end of the first year a day to be carried forward to the next year. In due course, however, the matter rights itself, and the beneficiaries under the fund receive the full amount to which they are entitled. The only way to obviate the present position would be an alteration in the Act to provide for payments being made every calendar month. This would not, however, I think, be so convenient to beneficiaries as the present arrangement, as owing to the difference in the lengths of the months, the period covered by the allowance would fluctuate from twenty-eight to thirty-one days, whereas under the present arrangements beneficiaries receive their money regularly every twenty-eight days.