NEW BOUNDARIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 22

NEW BOUNDARIES.

HOSPITAL DISTRICTS. COMMISSION TO INQUIRE. MINISTER'S ANNOUNCEMENT. (By lelegrapli.—Own Correspondent.) TAURANGA, this day. A decision to set up a commission to inquire into the boundaries of the Thames, Wailii, Coromandel and Tauranga hospital districts has been announced by the Minister of Health, the Hon. P. Fraser, in reply to representations by the Waihi Borough Council, the Waihi Chamber of Commerce and the Waihi branch of the Farmers' Union. The main question involved is whether the hospital districts should be-reconsti-tuted so as to form a smaller number of districts. At the last meeting of the Tauranga Borough Council a letter was received from the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. W. E. Parry, in reply to a communication from the council, stating that he was entirely in favour of an alteration of the boundaries between local authorities' districts where it could be shown that a redistribution of boundaries would provide for the more economical and efficient working of the districts involved, and he would confer with the Minister of Health with a view to seeing whether the boundaries of any hospital districts involved could be reviewed under the existing provisions of the 1926 Act. On the motion of the Mayor, it was decided to draw the attention of the Minister to the council's previous request that a commission be set up undrr the provisions of the 1932 Amendment Act. Small Waihi District. The burden which Waihi ratepayers have had to shoulder for many years in respect of hospital administration is mainly due to the fact that the Waihi hospital district consists, only of the borough area, the Waihi Borough Council being the sole contributory local authority under the Act. The settlers of the surrounding farmlands, including the Whangamata district, are rated in respect of the Thames Hospital, and at a recent meeting of the Waihi Borough Council, Mr. J. J. Robertson said it was "criminal and inhuman" that patients from the northern parts of the district should be compelled to pass the local hospital and proceed over 30 miles to Thames. The levy made this year by the Waihi Hospital Board on the local authority amounted to £2356, and the hospital rate was thereupon raised from 1/2 to 1/7 in the pound.