‘Payment By Results’

New Guinea’s Reply to Mr. Ward’s New Indenture System

OLD New Guinea planters are getting a certain amount of grim amuse ment out of the embarrassment be ing suffered by the Administration —or a section of it —in relation to the develop ment of the contract labour system on the plantations.

As is well known, the Ward Socialist regime, when it resumed control after the war, swept away the old native labour system and put in its place a plan that was based partly on idealism and partly on “ratbag” philosophy, and in which practical experience was generally ig nored.

Planters were not allowed to engage native labourers on a 3-year contract. A one-year contract was insisted upon, although it was contended then—and proved by practical experience since— that in the conditions peculiar to New Guinea the one year system either will not work at all, or will be very costly.

The scale of rations and equipment for

these indentured (one year) native labourers, insisted upon by the new Department of Native Labour, caused fur ther complications. It was much too lavish for natives engaged for only one year—and the natives themselves were among the first to say so.

But copra prices were good, and getting better, and the planters naturally made great efforts to work their plantations under these difficult Wardist conditions.

But they found the one-year-indenture system too difficult, and they gradually evolved another—namely, the Native Con tract System.

Under this method, the planter makes an independent contract with suitable natives, under which the natives come in and do the plantation work under a clear cut system of payment by result, and the native contractor usually provides all rations and equipment. This generally has worked quite well. It is being em ployed on an increasing number of plantations. The planter knows exactly how much his own copra is going to cost him, and he is freed of the petty and harassing control by the Native Labour De partment, with its scales and rates and regulations.

THE new system, it is reported, has not been viewed with high favour by the Native Labour officials. This De partment is a post-war creation by Mr.

Ward, designed to administer the new labour regulations and to crack the whip over employers generally. It was only natural that the new officials should re sent the development of the native con tract system.

But the older members of District Ser vices—who formerly controlled and administered the regulations governing indentured labour—had a keener appre ciation of the difficulties which the new Native Labour Ordinance had created for employers; and, generally speaking, they gave endorsement to the system of work ing plantations by native contractors.

Therefore, when the new Native Labour Department was inclined to run to high authority, crying out against the planters’

“evasion of the native labour regulations” by the creation of a contract system, and suggesting remedial measures, the Dis trict Officers—who have considerable the opposite view and urged that the interests of both natives and Europeans would be best served by giving the new development a fair trial.

It was also pointed out, very effectively, that as the ultimate purpose of the Ward ist policy is to build up the status of the native as a free man, no one could object to the system under which the planter was prepared to enter into a contract with selected natives for payment by results.

In this respect the contract system might achieve more than anything else in build ing up among natives a feeling of self confidence, a sense of obligation and ap preciation of a contract.

This argument, for the time being, has silenced the critics in the Native Labour Department. “Old hands” in the Terri tories may be forgiven if they are chuck ling a little.