The Month In Moresby

From Our Own Correspondent

Port Moresby, Nov. 30

IN Port Moresby there is a gentleman who goes by the name of Gunga Din.

He drives a Works and Housing jeep, and part of his present mission in life is to conserve the town’s inadequate water supply by shutting off the flow each evening.

Regularly at dusk, as he makes his rounds, shutting off the watercocks along the main pipeline, the rattle of his ap proaching jeep sends many a householder diving for the kitchen to fill buckets and jars. And, come the dawn, early risers must wend their way to the shower with a sparse bucket of water for the morning’s ablutions.

Somewhere amid the mass of plans and specifications at the Works and Housing offices in Port Moresby is a master scheme for solving the town’s water problem. In tnaybe one year, two years, three years your guess is a good as mine that plan will materialise but judging by past performances, conjecture is the mam Ingredient of officialdom’s forecast.

Criticism, of course, comes easily enough to residents who carry none of the re sponsibility for such matters. But, the attendant dangers of unwashed houseboys in unavoidable close contact with break fast foodstuffs and utensils, and un scheduled daytime failure of the water supply tend to a somewhat biased view ooint.

Mother Nature, with her seasonal rains, nay push the problem into the back ground for a few months. Let us hope that this relief will not mean that the future water supply plans also go into the background at Works and Housing leadquarters.

A RECENT crop of week-end traffic CX accidents in Port Moresby again emphasises the need for the long >verdue traffic ordinance. Until this legal nachinery comes into being the police are jowerless, in Port Moresby, to deal effec tively with cases of drunken driving. ‘Driving under the influence” is a major jffence in most countries and stiff penal ties are a sharp check on the practice.

Here, the slowness at which the urgently leeded legislation is going through the ed-tape channels at Canberra is ham itringing all efforts to get sanity and ;afety into traffic conditions in the town.

Only the traditional luck of the nebriate has saved a good round number )f recent week-end drivers from a final rip to the cemetery.

PE recent Territory tour of Miss Muriel Jackson, Queensland Com missioner for Girl Guides training, nd the Territory Divisional Commissioner, Jrs. A. V. G, Price, augurs well for the sstablishment of a sound Girl Guide trganisation in Papua and New Guinea.

As with the Scout movement, it will provide a healthy and instructive outlet or the energies of adolescent natives Towing up under difficult circumstances.

With the disintegration of native com nunity life and still lacking full adjust ment to European ways, these youngsters ire badly in need of leadership. In the Scout and Guide movement as with European youth—they can learn citizen hip and sense of social responsibility in in environment which makes learning ittractive and thoroughly enjoyable.

One of the heartening sights in Port Moresby is the occasional truckload of yell-turned-out native Scouts seTting off ►n their week-end camping trips. Under European leadership the otherwise aim essness of their leisure is being turned to r aluable account, both at the week-ends md in the evenings during the week.

Any European who takes a hand in this work is doing a service to children them selves, and to Australia. Neither the bad old ways nor the present official craze of give-all and expect-nothing from the natives, can help adjust them to 20th century conditions and responsibility. But the Scout and Guide system of inculcating

self-respect, loyalty, and pride in service and achievement, is one of the roads which can lead to a happy partnership of European and native peoples in Papua and New Guinea.

Administration financial methods appear to be in need of over haul. Although government ac counts are never in danger of becoming bad debts, delays in putting through pay ments are creating a bad aroma, and nave put some individuals and firms in financial

strait-jackets. In some cases these pay ments have amounted to only a few pounds; others have been large enough to seriously embarrass small firms, while one recent account, running into thousands, set an important concern back a tidy sum in lost bank interest.

As a collector of funds the government has a formidable list of penalties for citizens operating on a delayed action routine. Obviously, there are problems in government accounting worked on a

remote control system from Canberra, but living on a cash basis is as good a motto for governments as for individuals.

A SOLDIER Settlement Committee has been appointed in Port Moresby to draw up proposals for land settle ment of returned servicemen in Papua and New Guinea. The Committee com prises RSL members and representatives of various Administrative Departments,

Details of a pilot scheme for soldier settlement in the Sangara area are being considered, with possibly cocoa as the main crop, and tobacco and peanuts as cash crops.

In theory this project is good and is certainly worth trying. But if it succeeds in getting good agricultural land out of tne Lands Department it will warrant the striking of a special medal for the com mittee members.

At the moment the only applicant sure of getting the land he wants is the chap asking for the standard six feet in a cemetery.

WHEN all the wheels have stopped spinning Territory residents hope that Canberra will loosen up on further information regarding the recent visit here of Mr. C. I. Viccars.

Representing a British firm of consult ing engineers, Mr. Viccars made an aerial survey of potential sources of cheap hydro-electric power in the Territory.

This, plus the fact that he is a technical advisor to the New Guinea Resources Prospecting Company, was the limit of the publicity given his visit. It would also be interesting to hear more about this Company and the results of Mr. Viccars’ survey.

Cheap hydro-electric power and ex tensive mechanisation of new industries seem to be the answer to the labour problem in any large-scale development of the Territory.

It cannot be done with native labour working on the present system.

DURING the next few weeks plans will be made for Jubilee celebrations in Papua and New Guinea in line with the Commonwealth programme.

Responsibility for lining up suitable celebrations in the Territory falls on the

broad shoulders of Mr. Claude Champion, Assistant Government Secretary, who has been appointed Territory Director.

His henchmen, on this assignment, will be the District Officers who have the job of rounding up public-minded local resi dents for district committees.

One thing about Mr. Champion’s job is that he can never complain of monotony.

In the past eighteen months he has safely shepherded a Governor-General round the Territory, then an External Territories Minister, plus assorted minor celebrities with diverse objectives. With all this experience a little matter of a Jubilee should be comparatively simple.

EARNEST champions of primitive races should note that Port Moresby natives have now achieved equality in the matter of taxi privileges. Two special taxis catering exclusively for native clients are now busy bowling our brown brethren about their business in modern style.

This latest addition to Port Moresby’s business enterprises seems to be sufficient answer to the over-publicised claim that all natives are underpaid. When any European reaches the stage of whistling for a taxi instead of hopping a bus or padding it out on shoe leather, it can be assumed that he is not on the breadline.

Of course, under the existing system of native wages plus accommodation, plus rations, plus free medical and hospital services, and plus a few other odds and ends, wages in the native community are what the economists call “real wages.” and the take-home pay appears, for some at least, to be sufficient for them to be taken home in taxis.

Naturally there are still plenty of in digenous citizens of Port Moresby not yet used to the rigours of taxi-travel, but the fact that the natives asked for and got their own taxi services, is a clue to the general trend in native wages.