Doctor Alleges Colour Bar

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30768, 4 June 1965, Page 16

Doctor Alleges Colour Bar

(N.Z. Press Association/

HAMILTON, June 3. Dr. Jagdish Parmeshwar, a house surgeon at Waikato Hospital for the last two years has been refused a permit to stay in New Zealand. An Indian, aged 29, he has been in New Zealand for 13 years. He was born in Fiji and has been told by the Immigration Department that he must return there. “This is my home now,” he said in Papatoetoe where he is relieving another doctor. His student immigration permit expired last Monday and the Minister of Immigration (Mr Shand) has refused a new permit. Dr. Parmeshwar has his passage booked back to Fiji. He will leave next Monday. “I am prepared to work anywhere in New Zealand where I am needed,” he said. He wants to be a general practitioner. “But Mr Shand has said no. The Minister says I am needed in Fiji, but this is completely wrong. “New Zealand needs doctors just as much as Fiji. It all

works down to a question of colour.

“They won’t let me stay because I’m coloured,” he said. Dr. Parmeshwar says he feels no obligation to the New Zealand Government to return to Fiji. During his high school and university education, he received no financial help from the Government. The cost to his family in Fiji was about £5OO a year. “In a way, the Government could feel obliged to me for bringing that money into the country.” he said.

In February. Dr. Parmeshwar felt he could make a real contribution towards the problem of a shortage of doctors in some areas of New Zealand. He offered his services to the small town of Edgecumbe. near Whakatane, which had been without a doctor for some months. Advertisements had been published all over the world and letters sent to all New Zealand doctors. But there was no result.

“Mj t hopes built up.” he said. “I couldn't see the Government pushing me out when I was so urgently needed. “The Edgecumbe Progressive Association approached Mr Shand through the local member of Parliament, the Minister of Works (Mr Allen) to allow the doctor to set up a private practice in the township. “But Mr Shand said I had

to go back to Fiji,” said Dr. Parmeshwar. He said he was also offered a partnership in an Auckland medical practice. “Most New Zealanders are unaware of their own colour bar,” he said. “The people are wonderful and very sympathetic, but Government policy demands a ‘white’ New Zealand. “There should definitely not be mass immigration allowed, but a definite quota system for the people of Asia and the Pacific is needed.

“Qualified people who can make a useful contribution to New Zealand life should be allowed to settle in this country “It is surely a person's right to be allowed to live where he wants to.” Dr. Parmeshwar has a brother studying dentistry in New Zealand who has to be out of the country by the end of this year, and a sister who has just begun studying pharmacy. She also will have to leave at the end of her studies.