More Complaints About P-Ng Little Ships

Bad Equipment Causes Losses and Congestion

From a Special Correspondent

THE shipping position in this (Buka- Bougainville) end of the Terri tory is really most serious. The ships just can’t handle the copra being produced and it is piling up in every copra shed in Bougainville and Buka.

It is estimated that there are about 50,000 bags on the coast now. Some plan tations have ceased production because of lack of room, food shortages and shortages of essential supplies.

One man, at Kieta, had 40 natives from New Guinea—new recruits—held up for two months in Rabaul, because of lack of shipping, and they eost him four shillings each per day—that means well over £4OO for their sustenance, and two months of their time gone.

The plantations at Kieta have been five and six months without a ship. Stores at Kieta and some Government stations have been out of supplies.

The whole thing is really a horrible mess; and present shipping cannot even keep pace with production, let alone pick up the lag. What to do no one knows.

The PCB is going round in the usual —ever decreasing—circles, but that doesn’t help the producers much.

I am informed that the PCB says that copra cannot now be carried on hatches, as it gets wet. That’s farcical, as more copra gets wet from their leaky surf boats and leaky bilges than ever gets wet on the hatches. This ruling cuts down the carrying capacity of each ship quite a lot. I have not checked on this new ruling, but I believe the report is correct.

I enclose some photographs which show what happened a little while ago at a plantation below T Kieta. The surf boat — particularly leaky—just sank at the ship’s side, and you can see the copra

boat being retrieved, and the boys swim ming over the spot where the boat sank.

All the ships’ boats are bad. Much rice is spoiled.

Recently, at Jame, a sling was lowered to a surf boat waiting to receive it. Owing to a faulty winch and incompetent boys, the sling was lowered onto the side of the waiting boat, and she heeled over and partly filled with water, and 10 bags of rice, at £7O a ton —and badly wanted — were destroyed. That same ship, when loading, and owing to the faulty winch, capsized another surf boat, and 20 bags of copra were totally immersed. Then the PCB says copra gets wet on the hatches!

Control Of The Ships

A PLANTER, writing about the same time as our correspondent, says that the smaller New Guinea copra producers are not happy about the plan to give control of the coastal shipping into the hands of the Big Firms. They think that, as the Big Firms themselves own plantations, and have favourites among the planters, the routing of the ships may be arranged to take care of particular rather than of general interests.

This matter was brought before the Administrator (Colonel Murray) and Mr.

J. R. Halligan by a deputation of planters whom they met in Rabaul at the end of April. The planters asked that the rout ing of the ships be controlled by the PCB, in consultation with a representative of the Planters’ Association.

Mr. A. K. Reynolds of the Works and Housing Department, Madang, New Guinea, was recently married to Miss J.

Lyndon of the Tusbab Education Centre staff, Madang.