HOSPITAL FOR PAEROA

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 402, 10 July 1928, Page 12

HOSPITAL FOR PAEROA

ISSUE STILL UNSETTLED BOARD REFUSES TO CALL TENDERS (Special to THE SUS) THAMES, Monday. The controversy as to whether or not a maternity hospital should be built at Paeroa continues. The Thames Hospital Board says «t will not build it; the Health Department says the board must, and that if it does not, the Health Department will build it and charge the cost to the board. Now the board says it will not call tenders for the work.. In noting the concern of the board iit the expense the building would entail and cost of maintaining the hospital. the Director-General of Health, Dr. T. H. A. Valintine, in a letter before the meeting of the Thames Hospital Board to-day, sail the actual cost of the building was already provided for, and would not fall on the board. "As to the cost of maintenance of the hospital,” Dr. Valintine continued. “I do not consider the expenses thereof will press so heavily on the board as to entail the striking of a heavy additional rate as you suggest. As pointed out in my letter of January 6. the cost of maintaining a maternity hospital at Paeroa is only likely to involve a net expenditure of approximately £750 per annum, more than half of which is met by subsidy from the Government. “I doubt if the actual cost to your board, exclusive of the Government subsidy, of maintaining the proposed hospital will be more than £ 300 pec annum. Under these circumstances, 1 must ask your board very respectfully to invite public tenders for the erection of a hospital at Paeroa.” Mr. Hale, Hauraki Plains, expressed the opinion that Dr. Valintine was very much out in his estimate of the cost of maintaining the hospital, compared with cost of an economically run institution at Thames. “The only thing to be done, as far as I can see,” lie said, “is to inform Dr. Valintme that if he desires to build a hospital at Paeroa he will have to do so and undertake full responsibility.” Mr. Brennan, Paeroa, moved a resolution to the effect that although a majority of the board was opposed to the erection of the building, it realises that it has no alternative but to agree to the department erecting and equip- 1 ping a hospital at Paeroa. Mr. Danby, Thames, moved as an amendment that Dr. Valintine be i?V formed that the board considered the time inopportune for the project, and that it could not see its way to call tenders for the building. The motion was lost and Mr. Danby/s amendment was carried by five votes to three.