On Nauru

New Labour

Set-Up

Slow Rehabilitation of Phosphate Industry

{The fallowing extracts pom a private letter of a BPC employee on Nauru give some idea of the task in volved in re-establishing the phos

phate industry in the Pacific.)

WHEN the Japs built their pill-boxes, gun pits and air-raid shelters, they took all the good steel from Nauru’s cableways, buildings, bins and cantilever. They used this steel to cover the roofs of these shelters, and then covered them over with 6 ft. of earth.

To mend what they have broken, we now have to find these pits and then dig them out. Our task is doubly difficulty because we have had so much rain that the whole Island is now covered with weeds, creepers and trees.

We are getting ready at present to load the first phosphate ship. We have built a new jetty that reaches from the edge of the reef out to deep water with a conveyor running along it; from there the phosphate goes into baskets on the barges and the ships’ cranes lift these out and tip them into the holds.

The work is held up by lack of labourers —especially skilled labourers. It is very difficult to find capable truck drivers among the natives.

Carpenters’ tools are disappearing fast —it seems that canoe building has be come a craze among the Gilbertese. That, and box-making, with the ends of flooring boards that are taken away each night from the jobs. The Gilbertese are inveterate collectors: bottles, tins, bits of iron and timber, string, ginger beer bottles, wire—this junk all finds its way into their boxes. They came here from Ocean Island with over a ton of stuff per man, and they will go away with two tons. I suppose in the outlying islands things like bottles and wire are very hard to get, and have a good value.

The International Labour Office is tak ing a great interest in the working con ditions of the coloured races here. The Gilbertese can now be recruited for only one year without their families, and this first lot only until the westerlies are due —that is, November —a period of nine months since recruitment.

WE have just been staggered by the conditions laid down by ILO for the draft of Chinese recruits that is on its way; £6/10/- for a labo.urer (we do not dare to call them coolies); £7/10/for boatmen; and £l4/10/- per month for mechanics. The working week is reduced from 54 hours to 44 hours.

We have so much work to do that the last three months have been very dis heartening. There has been lots of work done and little to show for it.

There are no carry-baskets or carry poles, and no cane coming with the re cruits. I do not know what we are going to do, as it appears that a Chinaman will not wheel a barrow or throw phosphate in a shovel, like any good Christian, but must carry his two baskets balanced on a carry-pole. They wanted £3 each for carry-baskets in Hong Kong and three weeks to make them. It sounds crazy to mG.

While the British Military Government is holding the official rate of exchange at par, inflation is running not. Official rate of exchange is 10 dollars to the £ sterling, and black market rate 500

dollars. I shudder to think what cane furniture will cost here. Thank God, the Commission supplies most of it.

The Chinese themselves have a tremen dous amount of luggage with them, we hear, so perhaps they have done some speculative buying in a more sensible market.

LATER: The 800 Chinese arrived this morning, about two-thirds in an Europeanised garb of shorts and singlets, the rest in the conventional pyjama-like coolie suit. Very weedy and pinched they 100k —not surprising, I sup pose, after years of Japanese occupation.

A number of our old boys are among them, which is good and bad—they will know something, including all the old tricks.

The Gilbertese are going away on the “Trienza.” We will then have only Chinese workers, and a few Nauruans.

We will be sorry to see the Gilberts go as they were always happy and laugh ing. But they did not know anything about machinery or trucks or tools, and were too playful. Tons and tons of old bottles and tins are going with them.