Food Subsidies

Fiji Pays Heavy

Estimated £100,000 to Keep Down Prices of Flour and Ghee

From Our Own Correspondent

Suva, May 2

THE sum of £llO,OOO is no trifle in the yearly Budget of a small Crown Colony. But this is the latest esti mate of what it will cost Fiji to keep down the prices of sharps (for the Indians); ghee (for the Indians); bread, flour and biscuits (for the Europeans, part-Europeans, Fijians and a limited number of Indians).

The price of Australian flour and sharps went up another £2/10/- per ton in February and so up go the subsidies in Fiji.

In 1946 the subsidies on these two items amounted to £54,110. In 1947, it is officially estimated that the cost will be £lOO,OO0 —with another £lO,OOO “to keep the prices of local and imported gh.ee at a uniform level.”

With regard to flour in the form of bread and biscuits, which an Indian member of the Legislative Council in March seemed to regard as a European preserve, it may be pointed out that more and more Fijians in the Suva area are being forced to eat bread and biscuits in place of their own dalo (taro) which has been pushed to famine prices in the Suva markets by exploiters who are taking advantage of lifted controls.

Again, during the war thousands of Fijian serviceman were arbitrarily put on “European diet”. Detesting it at first, they ultimately acquired the taste and have kept it. White flour and white sugar are no more a suitable diet for Fijians than they are for the Europeans whose teeth have suffered for generations from the effects of -those profitable com modities. But it will take yet another education campaign to persuade the Fijians to give them up.