Mr. Osborne Sees Improved
p. 14 · Read in the full issue
Conditions in Cooks
WHEN he returned to Auckland, NZ, early in December, Mr. A. G Os borne, Under-Secretary to the New Zealand Prime Minister, told the NZ “Herald” that he saw a brighter outlook for the people of the Cook Islands. He had been visiting Rarotonga as represen tative of the NZ Government at the sec ond session of the Legislative Council of the Cook Islands.
He said that native members of the Council had taken a full part in the dis cussions and dealt with the subjects thoroughly, constructively and in a well informed manner.
Mr. Osborne said he visited many citrus and other agricultural areas in Rarotonga during his three weeks’ stay in the group.
He anticipated a great increase in pro duction of citrus fruit, arrowroot, pine apples and tomatoes, as well as taro and kumaras for local consumption. The cit rus replanting scheme, which lagged for a while, was now being keenly developed, not only in Rarotonga but in all islands of the southern part of the group.
The people had been taking a consider able interest in the production of toma toes, he said. He had pointed out to them that New Zealand had a substantial hot house tomato industry, and the growers were entitled to have their interests con sidered by the Government. He asked island growers to arrange plantings so that production would be tapering off by the end of October.
Citrus nurseries, which at present con tained over 100,000 young trees, were being maintained in Rarotonga. Nurseries also were developing banana shoots in anti cipation of the resumption of banana exports.
Considerable planting was being done in Aitutaki, which was once one of the most productive orange-growing islands in the group. The old nitive trees had almost died out, but they were now being re placed by new trees, which were bein properly tended. Aitutaki had a fair prospect of recovering its former pre eminent position . ' ' ' = UNESCO has granted 20,000 dollars to the Pacif ? c Scientific Congress to en able seven scientists from war devastated countries in Asia, and two from Holland and Scandinavia, to participate in the Congress in NZ in February. This con stitutes the largest single financial assist ance 80 far given by UNESCO to a scientific congress.