Problem

Fiji Slums and the TB Problem More Action and Less “Planning” Wanted

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Suva, Nov. 6

MORE than a year ago the people of Fiji subscribed £62,000 to the War Memorial Anti-TB Appeal, and a Government subsidy brought the total to £82,000.

Although the original idea was to make an appeal every year for ten years, the overwhelming response to the 1949 appeal made a new appeal this year unnecessary.

From time to time the War Memorial Fund trustees make a statement of how money is being expended on the extension of hospital facilities and similar work.

Yet the main objective, as far as the public is concerned, does not seem to have been tackled yet.

In the eyes of most Europeans, the most ghastly feature of the TB situation was that, with the disease making appalling headway amongst the Fijians, the hos pitals found that they had no alternative but to send incurable cases back to the villages to die, after spreading the infec tion. It was determination to end this state of affairs that produced £62,000 in voluntary subscriptions in less than three months. Yet, a year later, it is still going on.

The Suva slums are amongst the worst, "robablv the worst, areas of TB infection.

But although new buildings are going up in all directions, there is no slum clearance or even slum amelioration named out anywhere. Slum landlords, it is said, will not rebuild because of rent restrictions.

The Government is aware of the situa tion; the Town Council regularly deplores it but is powerless to enforce demolition orders which would only increase the overcrowding; the missions are presumably aware of it: and private individuals who are not entirely blind must be aware of: it also.

Yet nothing is done bevond a vague andJ futile reference to a rehousing scheme ini the Development Plan.

If the Government borrowed some of the unused land in the Suva area and, in the name of a national emergency, built temporary houses, on modified Fijian traditional lines, the usual excuse of the lack of expensive imnorted materials would no longer hold good. And temporary rehousing for. sav. five years; would spike the guns of the more ruthless slum-profiteers.

Those who know something of the Suva slums and the effect thev have or the people crammed into them, know that something like emergency measures are desperately needed. Decent living con ditions are more urgently needed than are new shops, new cinemas or even new churches and schools. But nothing it done.