Going Way

Queen Victoria School Going Way of Cession Memorial

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Suva, Oct. 11

AN appeal from a Fijian in a local Suva newspaper has brought to light a number of formerly buried facts concerning Queen Victoria School, one of the two memorials financed by Fijians at the time of the Queen’s jubilee in 1887.

During the war, Queen Victoria School, which has been described as “a unique Fijian possession,” was pushed out of its home at Nasinu to make way for a mili tary hospital. Later it became a military tuberculosis hospital, and after the war it was turned into a teachers’ training college—not a Fijian college, but an establishment for any or all of the races now settled in Fiji.

A new Queen Victoria School was given high priority in the Ten-Year Plan, but what priority, if any. it will have in the dismembered Plan of the future, no one knows.

For years Queen Victoria School—the only semi-secondary school for Fijians and established through Fijian efforts— has been struggling along in makeshift quarters at Nanukuloa, in the north-east corner of Viti Levu.

This treatment of an all-Fijian estab lishment with a proud tradition and, within its limitations, a brilliant schol astic record, has roused resentment among Fijians and those Europeans who knew anything of the school and its history, but there seemed to be nothing to do but wait.

If such a thing had been done to the

Suva Grammar School or an Indian school, it is suggested that the scream of protest would have been heard in London.

But because the Fijians do not organise clamorous demonstrations and press their needs with relentless political energy there is a tendency in Fiji, to let those needs be displaced under alien pressure.

Recent cases of serious sickness at the school are attributed to inadequate diet, bad water-supply, badly-ventilated, over crowded dormitories and insanitary lat rine accommodation.

Badly-equipped and understaffed, Queen Victoria School is said to be in danger of slipping from its traditionally high reputation.

Treatment of the two Fijian memorials to Queen Victoria (the other was the now demolished “Deed of Cession Obelisk”) has been described as “a lasting disgrace.”

Drastic and immediate action is needed to restore the school to its rightful place.

Fiji Government’S Reply

THE Fiji Government, in a statement issued in mid-October, said that the importance of the Queen Victoria School to the Fijian people was fully appreciated.

It had been decided that the most suit able site for the new school was on the Tailevu coast where Sir Henry Scott had donated 200 acres of suitable land. Build ing of the new school had been given a high priority in the 1946 Development Plan.

But when the actual construction came to be considered, serious difficulties arose from shortage of materials and skilled workmen. It was also decided that a road must be built to the site before construc tion of buildings could begin. This road has now reached the school site.

The original Development Plan has had to be curtailed and revised. The Queen Victoria School proposal was one of those

now being examined by the Development Revision Committee. In the meantime the school was still being conducted in quarters at Nanukuloa which was never meant to be other than temporary. As a result of the recent reports about the health of the pupils a thorough examin ation was being made by officers of the Medical Department.