NORTH CANTERBURY HOSPITAL BOARD

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21424, 16 March 1935, Page 9

NORTH CANTERBURY HOSPITAL BOARD

TO THK EDXTOB OF THE THISS. Sir, —Mr W. S. Wharton's remarks on the ethics of members of the British Medical Association taking part in the business of the North Canterbury Hospital Board seem to me to be at the least very ambiguous. He says doctors are citizens and presumably voters. But if there were plumbers on the Drainage Board or brewers or publicans on the licensing bench : they must be citizens and voters also. Mr Wharton gives a good explanation about piles under the nurses' home and the reinforced concrete that had to be put into the building; but he ig-

norcs the extra storey on the top, which had more to do with it. Now coming to the retiring age, s "fh a weak reply I have never read. The fact remains that members of the stair are over the age, and I maintain that it does not matter whether they are doing so by the year or month or week or day; they are occupying P os i" tions and drawing salaries that should in the present economic conditions be available for others coming on, who often badly need employment. Now, as for the Ashburton home, the old men there, despite Mr Wharton's allegation that they are in the same category as old-age pensioners, are not in the same category at all, as the Government of New Zealand restored the cut in the pension and also paid back money for a few months, which was a pleasant surprise. But what a difference with this board! It has not attempted to give back the old men their modest sixpence. Some in Ashburton are old-age pensioners and have to make their pension over to the board. What do readers think of that? For another thing, inmates there by the rules are required to do any work they may be asked to. Nov/, considering these two last points, should they have had this cut inflicted on them? — Yours, etc., BULLS EYE. Ashburton, March 13, 1935.

[When this letter was referred to Mr W. S. Wharton, secretary of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, he said that the major part of the £IO,OOO had been used as he had explained previously. There were, of course, many other extras to be provided for in a building of the dimension of the new Nurses' Home. The matter of the reduction of sixpence in the allowance of the old men in Ashburton would, he expected, be dealt with when the boards estimates were being considered next month. Mi- Wharton said that he had no further comment to make on the retiring age of the board's staff. "I