HOSPITAL BOARD RELIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21164, 22 April 1932, Page 8

HOSPITAL BOARD RELIEF.

The action of the Auckland Hospital Board in granting relief in the form of provisions to unemployed who refuse to accept the work that awaits them has created a situation that must speedily be faced by the Government and all the local authorities upon which the board has power to impose levies. In the name of the board, Mr. A\. K. Ilowitt, chairman of its relief committee, says that under the law they cannot refuse assistance to any poison m need, and that they aie obliged to help men who are refusing work. Is this based upon an authoritative legal opinion? Section 85 of the Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Act authorises boards to grant aid to "indigent, sick or infirm persons." Can it be argued that a person who refuses work which would provide him with wages greater than the value of the provisions issued- is indigent? If so, the board would be legally compelled to provide for every person at any time who declined to earn his bread. The board's interpretation of the law cannot be accepted. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Some test has to bo imposed to determine the deserts of those who apply for assistance. In measuring their necessities it is surely not asking too much that an effort be made to decide whether there are means within their power to provide at least in part for themselves. If this is accepted as a principle, the fact that there is work offering, which has been refused, surely reduces the necessity of applicants to the vanishing point. If they accept the work and can then prove that their earnings arc not sufficient for the needs of themselves and their families, then the board is on sound ground in coming to the rescue and supplementing their resources. It has not only the right, it owes to the community the. duty to judge the merits of applications made. The new interpretation of its obligations which appeared yesterday bears altogether too great an appearance of running away from that duty.