Titewhai Harawira eyeing top job

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 9

Titewhai Harawira eyeing top job

PA Auckland Carrington Hospital is soon to lose its Maori health units, but the suspended co-ordinator, Titewhai Harawira, has her eyes on a new post. Mrs Harawira says she wants to be the medical superintendent, but failing that she may settle for a management position at Carrington. She said yesterday that in order to achieve her aim she would take a management course which would equip her for such a role. She said this after hearing proposals at an Auckland Hospital Board meeting to close the units — the whare hui and the whare paia. The board’s joint regional managers of psychiatric services, Dr Peter McGeorge and Mr Frank Stacey, said the units were scheduled to close on December 5.

Throughout the meeting, Mrs Harawira kept up a barrage of interjections, saying Dr McGeorge and Mr Stacey were liars, and the board was racist. Later Mrs Harawira said whare paia patients were very upset they would have to move. She visited the unit regularly, and had talks with patients about the planned closing.