New Zealand: 'Incredible' £190,000 job with three months' holiday - that nobody will take

'I can offer them a really, really amazing income,' says overworked doctor

Tokoroa has a population of around 14,000 (Sarah Macmillan/Flickr)

A £190,000 salary, three months of holiday and no night or weekend work for a job in an idyllic part of New Zealand's North Island might be expected to attract considerable interest from prospective employees.

But bemused GP Dr Alan Kenny says he has been struggling so much to fill the vacancy that he is even offering half of his medical practice in Tokoroa, Waikato, to the successful candidate.

The 61-year-old said his practice had "exploded" over the last year but that he had found it impossible to find anyone to help cover his expanding workload.

He told the the New Zealand Herald: “I can offer them a really, really amazing income; it’s incredible. My practice has exploded in the last year and the more patients you list, the more money you get. But it just gets too much at the end of the day.”

Dr Kenny said he had become increasingly despairing at his continued failure to find someone to share in the practice, which now has 6,000 patients on its books.

“I love my work and I would like to stay but I hit my head against a brick wall trying to attract doctors," he said.

"If it’s hard enough to get doctors to work alongside me, it’s going to be a devil of a job to get doctors to replace me.”

A typical New Zealand GP could expect to receive between $150-$200,000 (£60-95,000) per year, yet despite Dr Kenny’s generous offer he said had had no applications in four months.

Linda Reynolds, New Zealand Rural General Practice Network deputy chief executive, said isolation, the lack of school options and poor broadband service all contributed to a dearth of rural GPs in the country, the Guardian reported.