Tongan Officials'

Salaries

Comparison With Peasant Earnings

Letter to the Editor. 1 HEARTILY agree with your Tongan correspondent, in your issue of August, that the question of salaries to native civil servants, and for that matter Europeans as well, “should be brought under serious review”.

As, however, your correspondent’s special pleading concerns only Tongans, this very brief but I trust “serious” con sideration of an important subject must be confined to the limit set by your writer.

The naive suggestion that, if the native officials were better paid, peculation would cease surely emanates from a Tongan mind, and betrays only a surface know ledge of past Tongan history. The ethical import of the suggestion that any class of men, Tongans or Europeans, civil ser vants or day labourers, should be paid over and above an agreed salary, in order to induce them to observe the Sixth Com mandment, must be left to their religious instructors to deal with. I wish merely to direct attention to the economic as pect viewed from the present financial position.

It cannot possibly be accepted that “study of the numerous cases of pecula tion of public funds by Tongans gives rise to the conclusion that in almost every case the primary cause has been the smallness of their salaries”. Who has so concluded?

Measured by Tongan standards where, as your correspondent states, labour can be hired from £1 to £2 per month, the Tongan Civil servant, from the beginner at £5O to the highest grade at £175 per annum, is at once elevated to an in equality unjust in principles and inex pedient in practice. Your correspondent’s admission that even the humble labourer’s £1 per month “cannot be defrayed from copra” owing to “the present low price” renders the question of how he proposes to provide the additions to existing salaries quite pertinent, for the present price of copra (the country’s sole source of income—bananas are negligible) has now become stabilised. “A little know ledge is a dangerous thing.” Your corres pondent’s reference to “vast changes in the economic and social life of the edu cated (sic) Tongan”, and his utter failure to discern whither these changes are tending, shows that Pope’s aphorism has lost none of its pungency.

WITH regard to the alleged high cost of living; 25 years ago, copra, upon which salaries were then based, was at least double the value to-day. The cost of living was, at the least, 20 per cent, higher than at present. Living, therefore, is much cheaper to-day, or, conversely, the standard is much higher than 25 years ago.

I quote a few items in proof. Good quality beef, fresh or corned, is in daily supply at 6d. per lb., and even less. The best of bread is 3d. per loaf. Fresh milk is a fraction over 2d. per pint. Fish is plentiful and reasonably priced. Fresh eggs, during the laying season, are plenti ful at 1/- per dozen. Fresh vegetables, peas, beans, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, beetroot, etc., are procurable almost the whole year at prices lower than obtain able in Dominion or Australian cities.

Native vegetables, yams, kumalas, taro,

bananas and many others, are far cheaper than the above.

Our civil servant is free of rent, rates or taxes on his dwelling, and his tax-abi (32/- per annum) will yield firewood for the cost of splitting and carting, as well as abundance of food-stuffs —in spite of our poor, under-paid, Tongan official hav ing only one full day each week in which to cultivate.

As to clothing, this entails no great ex pense. The native clerk, clad in a clean vala, shirt and coat, presents quite a smart appearance, at little outlay.

So much for your correspondent’s “diffi culty to struggle along on his small in come”. How about his brother Tongan, struggling along on his bit of land, whose income will not reach £lO for his year’s work? Nowhere in the civilised world is there such frightful inequality as be tween the Tongan bureaucrat and those

who bear the cost, with copra a little over £3 per ton.

FINALLY, although the “mills of god” have been slow to movq, they are now closing upon the Haapai official, who is referred to by your correspondent as holding “a £3OO per year post on a first class clerk’s salary of £175”. Excuse an other quotation from an English poet; your correspondent’s statement is one of those half-truths which Tennyson tells us “is ever the basest of lies”. When Haapai was a Port of Entry, a European official had charge; when it ceased to be a Port of Entry, it became of only sec ondary importance; the European was retired, and the position filled by a Tongan. Measured by the lessened respon sibility, the Tongan was the better-paid official.

The reference to Uliti Balu as being “in sole charge” of important positions is

another half-truth. That he was allowed —through the negligence of the official who was in charge—to assume “sole charge” does not bear the interpretation your correspondent intends to convey.

I am, etc.,

A. Cowley.

Nukualofa, September 30, 1939.