Fiji Export Bananas
p. 45 · Read in the full issue
Said To Be Poor
From Our Own Correspondent
Suva, Dec. 3.
MR. PERCY McCONNELL, who, while visiting Auckland, conducted a vio lent protest campaign in the local press about the quality of the Fiji bananas shipped to New Zealand, has thereby electrified the buyers in Fiji and inspired a detailed statement from the Fiji Agriculture Department.
It is, he claims, wrong and unfair to attempt to put the blame on to the Fijian growers, who “have never been checked and, as far as I can see, have never been given a plan to help them and to insist that better quality fruit is picked, packed and shipped.”
Pleading the case of the New Zealand consumer, Mr. McConnell demands that no immature fruit be picked; that all fruit should be carefully handled, and that the licensed buyers to-day should “ask the old-timers about the bananas that were shipped from Fiji to Sydney 50 years ago.”
Mr. McConnell returned to Suva in the Aorangi to-day. He said that very few Auckland shops display bananas from Fiji “because they are small and ripen black.”