HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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In the course of his speech, in support of the motion now before the Council, the mover indicated certain directions in which he suggests that economies might be effected in various Departments, and I would like to add some remarks with which my Unofficial colleagues are in general agreement.
Firstly, in regard to the Madical Department, I notice (at pages 30 and 31 of the Staff List which has recently been printed and sent by the Government to the Unofficial Members) that no less than 7 out of the 10 European Medical Officers, connected with the Hospital Division of the Medical Department, with salaries rising from £700 to £1,180 per annum, have been appointed since the 1st January, 1930. I conjecture that part of that large increase in the Hospital Medical Staff is owing to the Government having, about five years ago, given to all Civil Servants, right up to the Governor, the privilege of free Government Medical attendance in their own homes. That privilege was formerly confined to Subordinate Officers, whilst the Senior Officers had to resort to and pay for the services of Doctors in private firms. In this connection I have been informed that the fees received by one private firm of Doctors from Senior Civil Servants in the year 1931 amounted to $9,141, but have, in the year 1935, fallen to $2,107.
Whilst private practitioners are being hard hit by the above new policy of the Government, which occasions increased expense to the tax-payers of this Colony for salary, housing, leave-pay, and pensions, and, therefore, ought as a new policy to have been submitted to this Council for its approval, those practitioners are rigidly, and, as we think, wrongly, excluded from every part of the Government Hospitals, except the maternity wards of the Victoria and Kowloon Hospitals, and thus are debarred, in the majority of cases, from attending upon those of their patients who go into Government Hospital. We urge strongly that such exclusion should be abolished.
We have been informed that it is part of the policy of the Honourable the Director of Medical and Sanitary Services for the Government to take over (at the expense of the tax-payers) all the Medical Services of this Colony and to drive eventually the private practitioners out of business by the Government competing with them. We shall be glad to learn from Dr. Wellington, as a Member of this Council, whether our above information is substantially correct. Surely it would be possible for the Government to arrange for contracts with a firm of doctors, as is done by business people now, and to save public money by so doing; the choice of doctors to be left to patients to decide.
Of course it is conceded that, owing to the increase, during recent years, of accommodation at the Kowloon Hospital, some increase in the Government Hospital Medical staff was necessary, but we contend that such increase certainly did not justify the engagement
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