PENSIONS FOR THE BLIND.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160724, 10 August 1920, Page 4

PENSIONS FOR THE BLIND.

In New Zealand there are some 600 blind people, and, shame to say. no special State provision has yet been made for their benefit. All their needs and requirements, as blind people, are now merely objects of charity, and the State recognises no right of the individual. A lew blind people having sufficient of the wherewithal to live, are able to provide for themselves, but the majority of the 600 have the misfortune of poverty and poor relations, and these are hit very hard, particularly in late life, because if they wish to avail themselves of any benefits obtainable at the blind institution in Auckland, it means the breaking up of homes, or, in other words, the separation of parents from children and children from those who they hold most dear. The Jubilee Institute at Auckland, founded by charity and supported on the basis of voluntary charity, is the only provision for the blind now existing, and that useful institution provides for only 7(3 or 75 out of the 600. To-day 90 per cent, of the Dominion’s blind people are receiving no benefits whatever from the institution or its funds. More than 50 per cent, of the total blind are unemployable because of lack of training, advanced age or other disabilities. The State conceives it to be its duty to find work for the unemployed, who possess all their faculties; but the blind—shame to say, how very few people ever give them a thought. We have State pensions for the old, State pensions for returned civil servants, pensions for school teachers, pensions for the clergy, pensions for disabled soldiers, but for the unfortunate blind—no State provision! Does anyone doubt that they are not deserving of the State’s care and attention? Yet it has been found necessary that blind organisers should year after year have to tour New Zealand to beg for the help which it is the duty of a State to provide for its helpless. Miss Minnie T l . Bunton, a young woman blind from birth, is at present in Wanganui with a lady guide, soliciting moral and financial support for ■ tho presentation of a petition to Parliament to secure pensions for such as herself who suffer the great disability of sightlessness. Oh, the pathos of it! The unfortunate blind compelled to plead their own cause! One would imagine that all that Parliament requires is to know the needs of such in their midst, and State aid would immediately bo forthcoming. Yet it would appear that a petition is. necessary. There should be no difficulty in securing unanimous support in Wanganui.