Lack Of Amenities In Papua-New Guinea

Canberra Blamed For Waste and Muddle and Bad Condition of Ports

INFORMATION from various sources indicates that rehabilitation and pro gress in the Australian Pacific Terri tories of Papua and New Guinea are still being retarded by muddling and waste, for which the Australian Socialist Gov ernment and Canberra control seem primarily to blame.

The following is from a well-known commercial man who paid a business visit to Papua and New Guinea in August;— “I have had occasion recently to visit most of the Territories in the South Paci fic. In Fiji, Samoa and places eastward I find travelling conditions normal, except that all means of transport and accom modation are still seriously overcrowded.

But Administration, trade and transport seem to have settled down again, after the war, to a normal existence.

“My last visit was to Papua and New Guinea, countries which I had not previ ously seen. I was appalled by the lack there of ordinary amenities and amazed to discover that so little has yet been done to make good the destruction caused by the war. It is four years since hosti

lities ceased and I had assumed that in that time something like normal condi tions would have been restored.

“There are two modern hotels in Port Moresby, in which conditions are rea sonably good; but the demand for ac commodation seems far in excess of sup ply and travellers are jammed together in a way that makes for great discomfort.

I am told that the prewar European popu lation of Port Moresby has more than quadrupled, as the result of the town be ing made the headquarters of the double Administration and the headquarters, also, of the big oil search. But the authorities have failed in a remarkable way to provide anything suitable in the way of office accommodation for all these people. The wharves are falling down and there is nothing like sufficient houses for the people quartered there. One would have expected far more to have been done since 1945.

“In Lae and Rabaul, hotel conditions are simply terrible. The people running the hotels do their best under the condi tions Imposed upon them—but they can not be expected to provide decent accommodation when they are forced to use buildings of purely temporary con struction or native material. The failure to provide decent hotels in Lae and Rabaul apparently is due to the failure of the Government to assist private enter prise in any way in getting hotel sites, building materials and anything else.

“I never in my life saw anything like the fire risk in Rabaul, where countless thousands of pounds’ worth of goods are stored in all sorts of ways into flimsy shacks of a purely temporary character.

There is this tremendous demand in the Territory for goods, which the merchants —both European and Chinese —have tried to meet: but there is apparently no co operaion from the Government in making building material and facilities available so that suitable stores can be erected.

“In fact, I got the impression all through both Territories that the Govern ment is deliberately withholding reason able assistance from private enterprise in this matter of building and rehabilitation, simply because the Government is Socialistic and hates private enterprise.

“It was surprising to find that so little had been done to restore the amenities of life in Papua and New Guinea. I under stand that, before the war, life in these Territories was reasonably comfortable, and they were generally self-supporting.

To-day, the Government is said to be

spending millions of pounds in the Terri tories with a view to native betterment; and, compared with 1949, there is also large additional revenue from the expen diture on oil search and from the much higher price of copra. Yet so little has been done to provide the Territories with reasonable public works and private amenities.”

New System Op Prices Control

From a resident of Port Moresby:— “We have a new Prices Controller now and he appears to be a very busy man. He is introducing in Papua and New Guinea a price-fixing organisation that Canberra apparently expects will do something to reduce the cost of living here.

“We certainly hope that he will be suc cessful.

“He has had a go at the high price of bread. Bread was certainly at a very high level. He has reduced the retail price by a small amount—with the result that one Port Moresby bakery has promptly closed down, with the intima tion that it cannot continue to employ European operators and make a profit under the conditions imposed by official dom —namely, very high cost of material, etc., and a fixed retail price. We now are dependent upon one bakery only—which presumably is more cheaply run because a proportion of natives are employed.

“The official is now reported to be having a crack at the Port Moresby hotel tariffs—which do not seem to be very high, compared with Sydney and Bris bane rates. However, there has been some readjustment and we understand that the war is still going on between the hotel-owners and officialdom.

“I do not think that this heavy-footed method is going to accomplish much in the way of reducing the cost of living here. Prices here really are appalling—

but it is not due to the greediness of local traders, but to the enormous cost of every thing which has to be brought into this country by air or sea. In other words, if the Government wants to give us real re lief it should look to the conditions which it itself has created, as between Australia and the Territories, and not to local trad ing conditions.”

Questions About Works And

Housing

Report of an interview with a man who has known the Territories well for 25 years and who has just arrived in Aus tralia:— “I think that, of all the scandalous evi dence of maladministration in New Guinea, the prize must be awarded to the Australian Department of Works and Housing.

“In every Islands port visited by the ship on which I travelled, they told me funny stories about the muddle and waste of the teams planted in the different places by Works and Housing.

“Take Samarai, for example. For nine months they have had a Works and Housing team, averaging 10 men, in Samarai. They have had material lying there for a similar period. Yet, believe it or not, nothing worth mentioning has been done in Samarai in the way of either Works or Housing. Samarai was destroyed during the war. They still are without a wharf; and I could not find evidence that even one European bunga low had been built in the place, “There have been teams of Works and Housing men in Lae for a long time, and it is at least 12 months since a supply of steel piles was delivered there. Yet practically nothing has been done to pro vide Lae with wharfage accommodation.

Furthermore, the port of Lae seems now to be run by European and native wharf labourers who have fanciful ideas about the rates and privileges of workers.

“The experience of the Burns Philp liner, “Bulolo,” at Lae, very recently, is worth quoting. She had 400 tons of cargo

and many passengers for Lae. She arrived on a Thursday morning and she should have been out of the place within 24 hours. But on Saturday morning the barges still had not com pleted unloading and they knocked off on Saturday afternoon and Sunday because, presumably, the week-end is sacred in this workers’ paradise.

“So Captain Rothery, unable to get any guarantee of when his ship would be un loaded, sailed off to Dreger Harbour (Finschhafen) and other ports, and was obliged to call at Lae on his return trip in order to complete discharging. -That is typical. There is not only the enormous cost of discharging by barge, because the Government has failed to supply a suitable wharf; but there is also a further heavy cost of lazy and ineffi cient labour. The Territories’ people pay for that. , . “There are similar conditions in Port Moresby and Rabaul. The Port Moresby wharf is literally falling down and is really dangerous. At Rabaul. they still have only a pontoon wharf, which is costly and unsatisfactory.

“Canberra must have spent millions on these Works and Housing teams. I am told that the men get not less than £l5 per week each—and heaven alone knows what they do for it. They told me in Lae that there were now 60 men there, but no one could say what they were doing.

“High officials of the Administration are quite aware of these unsatisfactory

conditions, but they have no authority whatever over Works and Housing. Works and Housing in Papua and New Guinea is directly under the control of the Bris bane office of this Federal Department, and the Administrator at Port Moresby seems to have no authority at all in rela tion thereto. Administration officials, time and again, have tried to get some sort of control over this farcical set-up, and get some substantial advance made in regard to port conditions, but the con trol is still held jealously by Canberra.

High officials of Works and Housing come and go in the Territories, countermand ing each other’s orders and fighting be tween themselves. It is an incredible situation, and has to be seen to be be lieved.

“High and responsible officials have said to me very urgently that if there is need anywhere for a Royal Commission of Inquiry, there is need for one into the operations of Works and Housing in Papua and New Guinea during the past two years.” (Territories Minister Ward stated in Canberra on August 10 that wharves cost ing £636,000 would be built in Papua and New Guinea “to replace wartime struc tures which could not be economically repaired.”)

Conference In Port Moresby

•TT is reported in Sydney, that recently 1 there have been urgent conferences in Port Moresby between the Ad

ministration, and the shipping interests, in relation to the conditions in the dif ferent Territories ports. •It is understood that the shipping companies concerned have made the strongest possible protests to the Admin istration against the conditions they are forced to put up with in practically all the principal ports—conditions which add seriously to the cost of all transport and of all goods entering the Territories.

The Administration promised that im mediate steps would be taken to alleviate some of the worst conditions complained of but little appears to have been done, yet.

It is reported, unofficially, that Can berra has decided to abandon the plan of carrying out important Public Works in the Territories by Works and Housing and that such works will be carried out by private contractors.