THE WELLINGTON HOSPITAL MUDDLE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 109, 1 February 1941, Page 10

THE WELLINGTON HOSPITAL MUDDLE

Since one of its own members has publicly declared, with reasons, that a sufficiently strong case of muddlcment has been established to warrant a thorough inquiry, it is rather strange that the Hospital Board should now consider ’that there is nothing to be gained by pursuing its previous intention to make a public statement in answei to the criticism that had been made on the subject of its budding plans. At the board meeting on I hursday the chairman. Mi. Castle, took up the attitude that tlie public would not be interested in a long and detailed history of the ease; the board, he added, had no apologies to make, or if members themselves had any the best time to make them was at the elections. This statement does poor justice to the public’s interest, ft is the public that is being deprived of hospital facilities as a result of the extraordinary delays in providing the urgently-required extra accommodation, and it is also the public that will be called upon to foot the bill for the extra expense of all the alleged muddlement that has caused these delays. An explanation is due, and it should be made now, by the board as a responsible, body--responsible to the public—not by individual rnembeis during the partisan heat of an election campaign, 'flic difficulty that appears to face the board in this matter is, according to Mr. Glover, that it would not be possible to prepare a statement to which all rnembeis could put their signatures, so divergent were their views. Does not this statement strengthen the case for an inquiry by an independent body.