Legislative Council
pp. 42-43 · Read in the full issue
Short- Session of Fiji Legislative Council Elections to be Held Shortly
From Our Own Correspondent A mTTT , SUVA, June 26.
THREE-DAY session of the Fiji Legislative Council was held at the en <3 of June—the last meeting before the elections to appoint new European and Indian unofficial members.
Business consisted of a debate on Forestry policy, and 204 questions—2o3 of them put by three Indian members.
Forestry Policy Approved
AFTER rejecting six amendments moved by Mr. A. A. Ragg, the Legis lative Council on June 21 adopted the Government’s Forest Policy.
The policy which was supported by three of the five European unofficial members and all five Fijian members, but was opposed by Messrs. Ragg, F. G.
Archibald and all the Indian members, adopted the policy by 27 votes to seven.
Its main aims are to conserve existing forest areas, to reafforest suitable areas —including some of the denuded hill country in the dry zone of Viti Levu— to control and prevent soil erosion, and to increase timber supplies without per mitting the wholesale destruction of forests that has been common in the past.
The Forest Policy debate was the prin cipal business of the last session of the Legislative Council before the elections.
204 Questions
OUT of 204 written questions by Legis lative Council members at the three day session, 203 were asked by three Indians. One member, Mr. A. D. Patel,
filled up eigivt pages of the 12-page printed business paper on the first day by producing 180 questions involving de tails of the distribution of freehold, lease hold, Fijian and Crown lands in the Colony.
The Government’s reply grouped 155 of the questions and dismissed them with the statement that the information sought was not available and could not be made available unless the Lands Department were provided with additional staff. It added that an officer is now working on a land title index which “would enable a portion of the information asked for to be compiled in due course by the Gov ernment Statistician.”
Twenty-four further questions relating to Indian interest in the demarcation of Fijian land reserves in Rewa and north western Viti Levu were also grouped in a reply stating that in neither area has the Reserves Commission completed its investigations.
The one exception to the Indian monopoly of questions was a Fijian re quest, from Ratu George Tuisawau, for details of the main examination results at Queen Victoria School (Fijian) and the principal Indian and European schools.
The tabulated reply showed that four years of disorganisation and semi-neglect after QVS had been moved out when its Nasinu home was commandeered for an American Army hospital, followed by staff shortages and improvised quarters at Nasinu, had not helped the only real centre of Fijian education to keep pace with the uninterrupted progress of the schools of other races.