OTAGO HOSPITAL BOARD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19530, 13 July 1925, Page 4

OTAGO HOSPITAL BOARD.

BENEVOLENT COMMITTEE'S REPORT. Tno following is the report of the Benevolent Committee, to be submitted to 1i..-. r iiai i>oard at its next meeting:— The committee reports having dealt with 38 cases of relief at a weekly cost of' £26 10s. Casual cases for relief amounting to £237 9s 3d have been approved. The admission of a patient to the Queen Mary Hospital, Hanmer, as a charge for maintenance against this board, is approved, from month to month, for a maximum period of three months, after which time no liability will bo accepted by this board. Notification has boon received from Education Department in connection with an admission to the School for the Deaf at Sumner, for which this board will probably have to accept liability. Notification has also been received from the Education Department of the admission of a pupil to the School for the Deaf at Simmer, and the board may possibly have to bear the cost involved after an' inquiry has been made by the stipendiary magistrate. Four applications for relief have been declined. During the past month five persons have been admitted to, one discharged from, and two deaths have occurred at the Otago Benevolent Institution. At present 155 inmates remain.

by the performance of statutory work is always diftioult, as the records of the Compensation Court under the Public Works Act bear eloquent testimony. In some cases wo were breaking up connections of lifelong standing; wo were compelling people to seek other and perhaps now means of winning a livelihood; wo were about to submerge 25ft under water a onetime prosperous township; while in other cases our proposals entailed the shifting above waterline of homesteads fully developed by tree planting and other improvements; and in addition to all those factors there was the highly problematical, and therefore difficult:, question of the loss of prospects of winning gold. “On the other hand, the value to the city of a storage capacity equal to the full average flow of the river under all conditions was simply inestimable, and when the fact is recalled that under ordinary circumstanccs that the benefit is not a thing of a year or a decade, but will exist for all time, it can hardly be questioned that the whole transaction was and will increasingly become of vital advantage to Dunedin and the surrounding districts that look to Wai-pori for a supply of electrical energy. If that fact should chance to bo lacking in full appreciation to-day, the opinion is here ventured that the future will most assuredly correct the misconception, just as emphatically as Waipori has already played havoc with the forebodings of some of its critics.”