Tonga’S Growing Pains

A Call For Some Urgently-Needed Minor Reforms

A contributor, calling himself “Whither Bound? ” who knows Tongan conditions well, points to some minor evils which need attention. It is an interesting description of the country's condition, because a great deal now is being said about the Pacific Islander's capacity for self government, and Tonga is the only Pacific country which is almost completely independent.

IN the “Pacific Islands Monthly” of December, 1945, there was a stimu lating article entitled “Whither Bound? If Tonga has a future, what is it?”

In the three years that have elapsed since, not much change has been recorded.

And, while there is much to be said against Tonga trying to change itself into a commercialised and industrialised com munity, some advance on present “laisser faire” methods would be advantageous, while retaining the main characteristics of Tongan life, as it has been lived for centuries. The desire to get into the van of civilisation may be all very well theoretically, but there are grave disad vantages in it; and the best thing to do with the Tongan, if he is to preserve his placid existence in a distracted world, is to leave him largely alone—to leave him, in fact with the “hope that light and graciousness, and the survival of a simple view of life, that accepts birth and death as it does the fecundity of the earth, will remain long exempt from mechanisation and organisation.”

But where the authorities fail is in leaving too much to right itself.

THE January “PIM” published a resume of Revenue and Expenditure for

1948-49, with some ambitious spending forecast in the last paragraph.

The new telephone exchange is needed, provided it will improve the telephone service; but the electric light scheme for Nukualofa, estimated to cost £28,000 is a doubtful proposition, as it must be run on imported fuel, which may make the cost to users prohibitive.

So many new schemes are in the air, and in the minds of their promoters, that needful work on schemes already passed, having lost their novelty, is shelved—e.g., the repair of the Yellow Wharf and the improvement of the water-front. The water-front, from the Palace to Mauf anga, could be improved out of sight by the judicious expenditure of a few pounds.

In a country whose population has a marked tendency to pulmonary diseases, greater attention could well be bestowed on the roads. Within twelve hours of the cessation of heavy rains, dust is raised by a passing motor lorry or car and, after a day or two, clouds of pul verised coral hang in the air for several minutes, when passing vehicles disturb it. The surface of the roads (outside those in the town, some of which are tarred) is not hard enough to stand the

growing traffic of 6, 8 and 10-wheeled lorries, in addition to the normal traffic of horse-drawn vehicles—the roads “wear” too soon. A means of providing a hard, smooth (that is, free from knife-sharp bits of rock which are unsuitable to a barefooted population) and lasting surface is a problem that the Public Works De partment might well ponder and solve and apply the solution. Also, it should attend to the encroachment of the sea at certain parts of the beach, notably (1) Kolomo tua, (2) the Eastern side of the Palace and (3) at Tukutonga.

THE matter of intoxicating liquor being far too easy of access to the native Tongans, and its debilitating and demoralising effects, is also one which might receive Cabinet consideration. Far too much liquor, in recent years, has got beyond the imaginary barrier between the stores (and clubs) and the native. New regulations regarding' liquor are urgently needed or, at the very least, the present regulations should be enforced.

Card indexes for the keeping of liquor stocks should be abolished and a proper leather-bound book kept, showing receipts from Overseas and sales to the actual consumer, and periodically inspected by the police.

The police themselves should be in structed in the handling of drunks —that is, get them out of the way when they have become a public nuisance, and not merely look on, as at a spectacle of public entertainment.

The argument now being advanced, that all restrictions on liquor to natives should be lifted, is a dangerous one. The Ton gan, except in a few cases, does not know how to use liquor and even the official list of persons with permits might be cur tailed with advantage.

ATTENTION has already been called in your columns to the rates for air mail postage from Tonga, which are far in advance of the rates on inward air letters for the same journey—2/3 outward, in one instance, as against 7gd. inward.

With regard to the closing of mails at the Post Office, the time advertised should be the latest time for posting, and not the time the made-up mail leaves the Post Office for the outgoing steamer or for conveyance to the air-port Since the publication of the article “Whither Bound?” three years ago, it cannot be said that the Tongans have made any progress in public demeanour.

There is a larrikin element which could and should be suppressed, to the ultimate benefit of all concerned. No doubt the presence of oversea troops during the War assisted these lads in their slide downhill, but the process had started before the troops came. Now, the task of the Gov ernment and the Missions, as well as the steadier section of the Tongans themselves but especially the Police —should be to get them back to where they were— a dignified and respectful people.

PROBABLY the high price of copra (£46/10/- per ton to the producer) is too easy money. Certainly, the natives rely too much for food on their increased spending power, and they ob tain foodstuffs imported by the stores and are not giving the necessary attention to the production of home-grown food on their allotments. Repeated warnings and proddings by the authorities are necessary in every village throughout the group to get the people to plant and keep on planting.

The peculiar spectacle of natives buying from other natives that which they could have for the growing, and at absolutely black market prices, reveals a state of affairs that should never have been al lowed to come into being.

There is a Competent Authority here, of course, but there is great c(pnfusion as to prices. In the sale of native pro duce, such as taro, kumala, yams,

bananas, eggs, chickens, etc., there seems to be not even a suggestion of sticking to the published figures, whilst in tailoring, bootmaking and repairing, the listed rates do not have any bearing on the rates charged.

With regard to imported goods, some of the prices fixed by the Competent Authority are less than landed cost, some are about the equivalent of landed cost, some leave a meagre suggestion of profit if everything goes right (no pilferages on board ship, short weight, or anything of that sort) while on others there is a modest return.

These contradictory levels, together with an unnecessarily complicated system for the assessment of duty, and other calcu lations, apparently cause a confusion of mind which is worse confounded by numerous other regulations and restric tions.

Recent figures give £141,000 as the Customs duties expected in the current financial year, which includes £21,000 from the iniquitous Port & Service Tax of 5 per cent, calculated on a basis which puts a value on imported goods in excess of the true value, and further adds directly to the already stratospheric cost of living. This tax should be abolished.

With £400,000 odd in the stocking the Government could forego this.

AT the 1948 session of Parliament a motion was brought in and passed designed to simplify the tortuous method of ascertaining values for the payment of duty and to arrive at a value nearer to the true value of the commodity.

The result of this, after the “experts” had finished with it, was a method more com plicated than the one superseded. The only true value of a commodity for the assessment of duty is its prime or invoice cost, plus actual freight, insurance, etc.

It is to be hoped that this miscarriage will be put right by the next Parliament.

But the brightest jewel in the glittering crown is that while the Government charges 3 per cent, to remit money in payment of imported goods and 3 per cent, on the exchange (if any), there is a regulation in the official Tongan Govern ment Gazette which specifically prohibits this charge to be included in an Im porter's costing of goods at more than U per cent. What sort of comedy is this?

Not to use a harsher term, it is at least unethical.

FR the past two or three years the community has been afflicted with periodical goal-breaking. Habitual and desperate criminals are housed in buildings quite inadequate to contain them, and slack supervision makes es cape easy. During their periods at large these criminals perpetrate further crimes, those of robbery and intimidation, and are a source of fear and terror to the law-abiding and tax-paying natives, par ticularly those in the remote and more

secluded villages who have everv right to expect and to recelve DrotSlon from these marauders receive P rotectlon lrom Before anv grandiose schemes are nut

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Uraia N. Koroi, of Fiji, was a con spicuous exhibitor at the recent Ipswich Show (Queensland). He is a third year animal husbandry student at the Gatton Agricultural College. On completion of hls course he plans to take a Government position in Fiji.