‘PUBLICATION PREMATURE’: CHAIRMAN’S COMPLAINT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22612, 15 April 1948, Page 4

‘PUBLICATION PREMATURE’: CHAIRMAN’S COMPLAINT

DR. E C. GRANT'S RESIGNATION

Indignation was expressed in a telephoned interview yesterday by Mr. V G. 11. Rickard, ghairman of the Waiapu Hospital Board, respecting the publication of news of the resignation of Dr. E, C. Grant from the position of medical superintendent to the board.

The information was published on Monday last, whereas the resignation did not reach the board’s secretary until Tuesday morning.

Mr. Rickard expressed dissatisfaction with the statement, contained in the Herald report, that the resignation had been received by him on the Monday. Actually it did not come into his hands until yesterday, when he visited the board’s offices at Te Puia, although he had had telephoned advice from the board’s serretary of its receipt at the office on Thursday morning. Without Board’s Authority He expressed the view that the matter should not have been ventilated in the press until the board made an official statement concerning the medical superintendent’s resignation: and also stated that the report was incorrect in referring to the proposals formulated by the board for a district medical service in connection with the of the Minister of Health to Waiapu yesterday, was not arranged to discuss details of the scheme, sair Mr. Rickard and in that respect also the report was at fault. No one, he added, had any authority to convey the information to the Heraid untif the resignation had actually been received and discussed by the board. The matter should at least have

been referred to him prior to publication. The information concerning the tendering of Dr. Grant’s resignation was received from an unimpeachable source, and there is no question of the authority on which the Herald published it. Tire resignation notice was addressed to the chairman of the board and direeted to him through the secretary, which is the customary and only effective method of dealing with such a matter. The Herald assumed that the notice had actually reached the chairman on the Monday, whereas it was not communicated to him until Tuesday, by the secretary of the board. The Herald may have been misled in assuming that the proposals to establish a district medical service in the Waiapu hospital district would be discussed on the occasion of the visit of the Minister of Health to Te Puia, the headquarters of the board. It was not wrong, however, in ascribing Dr. Grant’s resignation in part to the prospect of a change in the conditions of his appointment. An effort was made, without success, to contact both the board’s secretary and the board chairman prior to the publication of the report. •