SOLDIERS' WARDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 123, 26 May 1944, Page 6

SOLDIERS' WARDS

BUILT BY GOVERNMENT

"The Wellington Hospital Board did not build these soldiers' wards at all," said Mr. A. W. Croskery (Labour) when replying at Ngaio to a statement made by Mr. J. C. Crawford that one of the achievements of the present board was that they had built two soldiers' wards, an eye ward, a plaster ward, etc. It might be expected, he said, that a member of the board should know the simple facts, but evidently that was not so.

What actually happened about, the soldiers' wards was that the Public Health Department asked the Wellington Hospital Board for the ground on which to build two soldiers' wards, and this was loaned to them by the board, and the two wards were erected by the Public Works Department, the Wellington Hospital Board having nothing whatever to do with the erection of these wards. Furthermore, the Public Health Department wanted the Wellington Hospital Board to purchase these two wards from the Public Health Department when they were finished with as soldiers' wards, and had it not been for the opposition raised by the Labour members, this condition would have been agreed to. The position now is that the Hospital Board need not take the two wards unless it thinks fit to do so, and this is the only bbard in New Zealand that has this condition laid down. In respect to the eye ward and the plaster room, these were built under the board before the Citizens' took complete charge of hospital management.