POSITION WITH WORLD BANK

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27858, 5 January 1956, Page 13

POSITION WITH WORLD BANK

DR. C. P. MCMEEKAN DECLINES

DECISION TO REMAIN AT RUAKURA

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, December 4.

Dr. C. P. McMeekan, superintendent of the Ruakura Animal Research Station. today announced his intention to decline the offer of a post with the World Bank. He will remain at Ruakura.

The World Bank is believed to have offered him about five times his present salary. “After very serious consideration, 1 have decided that the problem of maintaining permanent high-quality, research in New Zealand is not going to be solved by people in my kind of position running away overseas,” Dr. McMeekan said.

“Though the Government has given no undertaking. I am hopeful that it will see fit in the near future to create conditions which will enable* us both to recruit and to hold our best scientific workers.”

One of New Zealand’s leading scientists, Dr. McMeekan has a world reputation in livestock research.

Last month he said in Auckland that New Zealand 1 should join the World BgEnk, and “abandon her unenviable position as a fellow abstainer with Communist Russia.”

He said the Dominion should change her attitude, not for what she might get out of it in easy dollar loans, but for the prestige of helping the world to do better things. Dr. McMeekan first revealed the offer in October. He said then he was “very tempted.” “Obviously New Zealand cannot match the offer.” he said, “but it is time scientists and engineers here were paid a decent wage.”