Rehabilitation Is Difficult

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Cairns, Dec. 16.

THE lack of timber and other building material is holding up the rehabili tation of plantation areas around Madang, while the new Government one year contracts with native labourers are proving a set-back to copra industries, said a Madang plantation owner, Mr.

Geoff Luff, who is at present in Cairns on holidays. Mr. Luff went to New Guinea about 15 years ago and left after the Japanese bombings of Rabaul, and returned when the war ended.

One of his two plantations has been so badly damaged by bombings that he has not yet started to work it again.

Mr. Luff said that only a few people had been lucky enough to buy Army Disposals buildings and had any material for rebuilding on their plantations, and many, including himself, were forced to use roughly untreated timber got by the natives.

He added that although he had not had much trouble with native labour, it was one of the greatest difficulties for other plantation men. Before Australia altered the labour system, natives could be signed on for three years and were bound to remain at the plantation for that time, but now they could not be signed on for more than a year and could leave when they felt like it, making the supply of labour uncertain.

The Native Land Trust Board of Fiji has announced a detailed policy concern ing the control of dealings in native leases and sub-leases. It is stated that “the policy is designed to confine the selling price of native leases and sub leases within reasonable limits and to pre vent speculative buying or selling of leases or undue aggregation of land.”

Mr. Justice Thomson, who has been Puisne Judge, Fiji, since his transfer from Northern Rhodesia in September, 1945, has been transferred to Malaya.

With his wife and son he expected to leave the Colony at the end of December, proceeding to the United Kingdom on leave before taking up his Malaya appointment, Mr. Justice Thomson’s wife, Dr. Thomson, has carried out the duties of Government Medical Officer during the two years she has been in Fiji.