Denial From Minister

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30725, 14 April 1965, Page 18

Denial From Minister

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, April 13. The suggestion that the Government had succumbed to outside pressure in its decision to allow only certain sections of hospital staff to receive free meals at hospitals was denied today by the Minister of Health (Mr McKay). The staff concerned are house surgeons, senior house officers and hospital registrars, who will receive free meals from hospital boards

when they are required to remain at hospitals over meal hours. Strong protests were made by bouse surgeons at the fact that under the new hospital regulations they would be charged for meals. They were supported in their protests by the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association, the Medical Superintendents’ Association, and the Hospital Board’s Association. Nurses have begun paying 3s a meal under the same regulations. Although individual nurses have protested, the Registered Nurses* Association has taken no action. Mr McKay said the Government had carefully reviewed the situation, and felt that house surgeons, hospital regis-

trars and senior house officers should not have to pay for their meals when they had to remain at hospitals through meal hours. “But the Government was firmly of the opinion that this group was the only one for which there was any justification for exemption from the new charges—and then only In circumstances in which they are required to remain at hospital through meal hours,” Mr McKay said today. “All but this group living out will have to pay.” The secretary of the Nurses’ Association (Mrs M. Pickard) saif the new regulations were under study. More about their over-all effect would have to be known before the association made any submissions to the Government.