754
2. All seven members of the present Board are fully qualified medical practitioners and it is not considered desir- able to reduce the number of members so qualified as it is from members of the Board that examiners for the certificate are drawn.
3. At the same time it is considered desirable to permit midwives to be represented on the Board by certain qualified members of their own profession.
4. Clause 2 of this Bill, therefore, increases the personnel of the Board to nine, two of whom will be certified and enrolled midwives.
5. Section 4 (2) of the principal Ordinance enumerates the powers and duties of the Midwives Board. Paragraph (a) (i) empowers it to make regulations, subject to the approval of the Governor, regulating the course of training and the conduct of examinations. Paragraph (e) empowers it to decide upon the removal from the roll of the name of any midwife for disobeying the regulations or for other mis- conduct, and upon the restoration to the roll of the name of any midwife so removed.
6. Doubts have been expressed as to whether the powers in the said paragraphs were sufficiently comprehensive to authorize regulations providing for post-graduate training or for the removal from the roll of those not attaining the standard of proficiency required by such post-graduate training regulations.
7. Clause 3 of the Bill amends the two paragraphs so as to remove these doubts.
8. Clause 4 of the Bill is the long-established rule that no one is to be condemned unheard.
July, 1941.
C. G. ALABASTER,
Attorney General.