The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6th 1916 WANGANUI HOSPITAL BOARD.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 160, 6 September 1916, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6th 1916 WANGANUI HOSPITAL BOARD.

(With which is incorporated The Tal hapw Post and Waimarino News.)

The Wanganui Hospital and Charitable Aid Board appears to have abandoned the good old wholesome practice of issuing an annual report and statement of its accounts to the public, and more particularly, to the contributory bodies. It is some eighteen months since w e had the pleasure of discussing the hospital balance sheet, and we should be glad to let the taxpayers who contribute to the upkeep of the institution know just how matters stood at the end of the last financial year, because we know from very frequent enquiries at this office that they are more deeply interested than the authorities seem to think they,are. Appeals to contributing bodies have been rasultless of everything but disappointment at finding- that no statement of accounts is available. The best conducted institutions of the kind in New Zealand are those which have a public goodwill behind them, earned and acquired by taking the peo pie into full confidence, by advising them in the ordinary and usual way how their money is being spent and what real work is being accomplished from time to tjme. A close corporation is sure to invoke first curiosity, then enquiry, and if no information is forthcoming', then disappointment and discontent. There should be available to contributors and ratepayers at least ihe usual information given annually

by most public bodies, more especially so in the case of an institution that levies and disburses such enormous sums of the taxpayers’ money as the Wanganui Hospital and Charitable Aid Board is doing. We are told that everything is all right; we do not deny that, we take that for granted, but we would be glad to be placed in the position to tell ,our readers just how all right everything is. In two years one statement of accounts from the Board has reached this office, and we must admit noi statement coming 'in the ordinary way has been so interesting as it was. We have been waiting and expecting a repetition of the Board’s courtesy in vain. The Board surely can have nothing to keep from public view, therefore we must come to the conclusion that war conditions have accentuated the cheese-paring proclivities of its individual members. This ought not to be, however, seeing how insignificant the cost of issuing a balance sheet is as compared with the gross income. Perhaps the last occasion on which the Board had the temerity to make public the details ,of its operations the effort was not received with the eclat some had anticipated. It has been said, the public were ever ungrateful. No want of appreciation should, however, be permitted to cause the Board to swerve from a straight course of public duty, and we still hope that though the report and statement of accounts be long delayed, it will be forthcoming in the very near future.