"GETTING BACK!"

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1287, 16 November 1911, Page 5

"GETTING BACK!"

STRANGE ACTION BY COMMONWEALTH GOVERNMENT. DEMANDS CLEAN BILLS OF HEALTH It is only within tho lash month that steamers arriving from Sydney have been allowed to como alongside the wharf before the. passengers and crew havo been subjected to medical inspection in midharbour. Though Sydney has been a 'clean port" for a number of years the practico of submitting all passengers to a medical inspection and detaining tho vessel in tne stream for that, purposeit has often meant a delay of two hourshas been insisted upon ever sinco tho outbreak of plague some eleven Years "go in Sydney. For a year or two tho examination was a fairly searching one, and whilst intermittent cases of plague were reported from Sydney and Brisbane thero was no objection to.the procedure by reasonable people. Of late Years, however, the examination has been a more cursory one—a march past the Port Health Officer who usually stations himself in the smoke-room for that purposebut still it' was sufficient to safeguard against the landing in New Zealand of consumptives and the mentally weak. Why the vessel should be detained for an hour or two hours in tho harbour for this method of inspection has been tho subject of a good deal of adverse criticism from time to time, among the. most pungent critics being visitors from Australia, who resent tho implication that Sydney (or Melbourne as the case may lie) is not a clean port. Lately, however, tho regulation respecting the detention of vessels in tho SfcV.r 1 ' 11 . suoh time as tho P °rt Health Officer has examined all persons on board and given a clean bill of health has been relaxed, and the Sydney boats now steam right up to the wharf without stopping the engines or calling upon the anchor to catch hold of the earth, the reason ior this movement is Two „.° f fc haTo , this explanation. J.wo or three weeks aeo the ship- £ I r n f £l„ C?mpa^< 1 intCT «ted in the infcrcolomal trade received advice from the Commonwealth Government that wo,J he^ Utan \ cle ? n Ulh of health Teh iw aV °7 J o ', 1 *- Panted from wL « Zealand port touched at before the ship would bo allowed to work | tier Sydney, Melbourne, or Hobarti ■ ? n l? J ,r - ee Commonwealth ports which the Union Steam Ship Company s and the ■ Huddart-Parker Proprietary's steamers touch at. Tho Commonwealth Government will not accept a sin-do clean bill of health from the port of deparutre- m the Dominion, but demands a separate bill from each port. So the position at present is. that the steamer leaving here, every' Friday evening for e' i ey „, ha S t° carr ? ,ritu it clean-bills pi health from the Bluff, Dunediu, Lvtlelten, and Wellington, and the ilud'hrtFarker steamer, which trades between Sydney and Dunedin, via Auckland, has t°. secure bills from Dunedin, I.v Helton, Wellington, Napier, Gisborne (?) and Auckland, a demand which is considered tp be frivolous and a considerable hardship on the companies affected. The steamers are usually in and out cf pert the same day, and, during tho rush hours, the Port Health Officer has to be hunted up to testify that "there is no plague, cholera, typhus, small-pox, or any other pestilential discaso" in tho place, and for so doing asks a fee (a modest halfcrown). The cost of the bill is infinitesimnl, but ,the trouble in locating the Health Officer, and the loss of time to the person entrusted with the search is considerable. The new regulation, which has been in operation for a' fortnight or three weeks, is considered-by the responsible officers of the companies affected to be far-fetched, if not altogether unnecessary.

"They are gottinp; back on us,'' i<aid one manager, "lor holding the ooats i;p on arrival from Sydney or Melbourne. No excuse is. made for. the rather extraordinary demand of a clean bill from every port visited, but if pressed they might refer to the eases of plagiio at Auckland of eleven months ago."