Mike Houlahan

Southern polytechnics and civic leaders are promising a loud and long campaign against plans to merge the country's 16 vocational training institutions into one national school.

The young woman hit by a truck while riding a Lime scooter in Dunedin last month faces more surgery but is on the road to full recovery.

Otago Polytechnic chief executive Phil Ker says he would be ''extraordinarily disappointed'' if the institution was reduced to being a branch office of a national organisation under government plans.

New Zealand's 16 polytechnics could be brought together as one entity if reform proposals for the sector revealed today by the Government are implemented.

Gastroenterology services have been overwhelmed by the response in the South to the national bowel cancer screening programme.