MEDICAL BURSARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 122, 25 May 1945, Page 4

MEDICAL BURSARIES

CONDITIONS CRITICISED A protest against some of the conditions attached to the granting of medical and dental bursaries was made at this week's meeting of the council of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, particular exception being taken to the provisions relating to a student being released from his contract to the State. The president (Mr. S. W. Peterson) said that the bursaries for students eligible to study medicine and dentistry originally had a condition attached, that the bursar was obliged to serve the State, after qualifying, for a period of three to five years. There was also another provision that the student could repay the capital cost of the bursary. As now amended the student wishing to do this had to pay 5 per cent, interest on the capital, and repay the capital, and it was left solely to the Minister .to levy an additional amount on the student before releasing him from his contract to the State. Was that fair? Had it some other motive? Mr. Peterson also said that the Minister had the power, under the Social Security regulations, to call any district a "special" district and place a salaried medical officer in the district. "When that occurs," he added, "no private practitioner has the right to collect fees from patients in that district through the Social Security Department. I will leave you to draw your own concluS1 The secretary (Mr. E. M. Bardsley) said that 60 bursaries were granted last year. -There was no limit to the number that could be granted, the position being governed by the capacity of the universities to take students, the number of suitable candidates and the'funds available. There was nothing to stop the Government filling the university with bursars, said Mi\ G. Stewart. The bursars wishing to buy out of their contracts had to pay back not only the capital, plus interest, but an unspecified amount as well. This was just a backdoor method of trying to get the medical and dental professions into the Government's hands. . Mr Sinclair Carruthers said it was contrary to democratic principles for any Government to use public, money to impose coercive conditions, particularly on students. It was surprising to see a Labour Government introducing such a system. . . Me. Peterson pointed out that the bursaries were contracts, and that the students, at date of acceptance, were schoolboys—legally minors. Was it fair or reasonable that the Minister should draw a contract with a schoolboy, and then, il the contract were in dispute at a later date, be the sole dictator of the matters in dispute?