Labour Shortage

Growth of Mining Causes Difficult Situation in Fiji

HPHERE are signs of serious difficulty arising in Fiji in connection with the supply of unskilled labour.

Employers depend generally upon the Fijians and, to a lesser extent, on half castes. Plantation labour in Fiji, as else where, is obtained for from £l5 to £2O per man per annum, and all found.

The opening of the goldmines at Tavua has altered everything. The mines wanted large numbers of Fijian labourers, and they just went out into the countryside and bought them.

In mid-September there were between 1500 and 2000 Fijians employed at the mines, at around £4O per annum and found, in addition to large numbers of more skilled half-castes, drawing about 12/- per day.

There was not a jobless man in Fiji; but, all over the Group there were plan tation-managers begging vainly for labour, and wondering how on earth they were going to carry on.

Indians provide no solution. There are 90,000 of them in Fiji, but they keep mostly to agriculture, small trading, etc.

As reported elsewhere, the labourers on Tavua goldfield have gone on strike, and are demanding higher wages from Mr.

Theodore and others.

An utterly unreliable correspondent says that planters, all over Fiji, are sending telegrams conveying tender sympathy to Mr. Theodore and the mine-managers.

Mr. Keith Watkins, of Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co.’s staff at Salamaua, New Guinea, married Miss Jeanne Taylor, of Sydney, at Salamaua on September 5.

Madame Maurice Colardeau, who was born in Sydney and left as a small child for New Celadonia which has been her home ever since, returned to Australia by the Van Rees from Noumea on October 13 for the first time in over 50 years. She is on her way to France to visit her daughter at Cote d’Azur for a year.

Madame Colardeau’s brother is M. Carlos Leoni, Consul for the Netherlands in Noumea.