Everything!

Hold

Matupi Natives Stick Up PNG Officialdom

TN October, two European technicians from Port Moresby, with a couple of native assistants, and considerable gear, arrived in Rabaul, to extend and improve the radio installation at Matupi, which maintains communications and guides planes in and out of the big air field.

They had to erect three big new wire less towers, out beyond the present in stallation. They had no sooner got started than loquacious natives from Matupi Village appeared. The technicians were informed, with noise and emphasis, that that was native land—they could not do that there ’ere!

The matter went to OTC and DCA (which are the initials of the authorities controlling civil aviation and radio com munications) and on to District Office.

Technicians were told to hold everything, and stand by. District Office shunted the argument on to Port Moresby—and there it stuck, for weeks and weeks.

The technicians, for two or three days, thought it was a fine arrangement—all salaries and first-class expenses paid, and nothing to do. One bright lad became the snooker champion of the Cosmopolitan Hotel. At the end of a fortnight, how ever, they were crying aloud with bore dom.

About the middle of November, a number of VlP’s from Moresby made their leisurely way to Rabaul, to inquire into the matter. They reported—what everyone in Rabaul knew a month before! —that the land on which the airfield and radio installation are located was taken

from the Matupi natives during World War ll—there was no other location avail able. There were no apologies to the natives—why should there be?—but there was an undertaking that they should be paid ground rent.

The inquiries showed that the rent had not been paid; so (the natives said) no more ground can be used. (The only new ground wanted was represented by three plots of 15 square feet—the concrete bases of the three aerial towers).

This 'incident provides a first-class ex ample of the way in which the Papua- New Guinea Administration works or does not work. In an efficiently consti tuted Administration, that matter would have been dealt with, at District Office level, within 24 hours. The Matupi natives would have been paid the rentals due to them —and then told what to do; and the job would have proceeded.

As it is, Port Moresby has been dealing ponderously with this Inost delicate matter of native rights, and probably re ferring questions of principle and policy to Canberra; the working party, at great

expense, has been doing nothing in Rabaul; parties of officials, at further heavy expense, have been travelling around inquiring into the matter; and the merry burghers of Rabaul have been made merrier still by this priceless ex ample of official ineptitude.—R.W.R.

Extraordinary Development

The foregoing was written in November.

Since then (we are unofficially informed) there have been most extraordinary developments. Moresby failed to get any agreement with the natives. The natives began to throw their weight about in relation to the ownership of the airfield land. The completely fed-up air com panies then announced that, unless this thing could be settled forthwith, they would withdraw their services from Rabaul. It is reported that the issue went to UNO—and finally was adjusted, late in December. Officialdom is keeping the whole thing hush-hush; and —as usual —the version given the man in the street makes the Administration look ridiculous.