Satisfied

UN Mission is Not Satisfied With NG Health, Roads

THE United Nations Trusteeship Council mission which visited New Guinea, Nauru, Western Samoa and some of the United States Trusteeship Council territories in the Pacific earlier this year has made its report to the Council.

The report says, among other things that it was found that the New Guinea Administration’s health plans were “by no means adequate.” It disagreed with the Australian government’s concentra tion on air transportation and said that there could be no steady progress in the Territory without a system of main roads.

New Guinea, was, they said, an almost virgin country with an enormous need for capital investment.

They said that salaries and housing conditions of Administrative officers needed improvement.

With all of which most New Guinea residents will agree. New Guinea was, of course, a much more pleasant place in which to live before war and Wardism had its way with it. However, such things as roads have been argued back and forth for the last 30 years—with little material result. With unlimited money, it is possible to construct roads anywhere, but under the present economic set-up it is unlikely that any part of the present Administration in the Territory would be capable of coping with the gigantic task of maintaining them.