South Pacific Commission
p. 22 · Read in the full issue
Ninth Session on April 28
THE Ninth Session of the South Pacific Commission will open at headquarters at Noumea on April 28, and may last 12 days. The six member Governments of Australia, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain and United States will each be represented by Commissioners and advisers.
Main item is the work programme, on which are 43 projects designed to promote the economic and social welfare of Pacific Islands peoples.
Mr. N. A. J. de Voogd, Nether lands Minister at Canberra, and re cently appointed Netherlands Senior Commissioner will be chairman.
Problems associated with the catching, processing and marketing of fish in the South Pacific will be discussed at a fisheries conference, opening at Commission headquarters on May 14.
Dr. L. R. Catala, of the Research Institute of French Oceania, will now submit to the Commission his report on the economic development of coral atolls. In a six months’ in vestigation, he sought ways and means of producing in the atolls more food of wider variety.
Rehabilitation work is still in pro gress at the Nadumloulou Intro duction Garden of economic plants and trees, which suffered severe damage in the Fiji hurricane last January. This Garden is maintained by the Fiji Government, with Com mission assistance.
An American leprologist, Dr.
Norman R. Sloan, has been engaged under Commission health project H. 7 to carry out an eight months’ leprosy survey of Netherlands New Guinea, commencing this month.
An authority on tropical housing, Professor J. P. Thijsse, of the University of Indonesia, is now in Sydney preparing a report on native housing in the South Pacific. He visited Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua and New Guinea, and Netherlands New Guinea.
An English authority on vocational training, Dr. F. J. Harlow, is in Suva preparing plans for the Commission of a model vocational training in stitution for Islands peoples.
Mr. D. B. Roberts, M.A., has taken charge of the South Pacific Litera ture Bureau, recently set up by the Commission at its Social Develop ment office in Sydney to stimulate the production of English and ver nacular literature for South Pacific territories. Mr. Roberts was Acting
Director of the Central African Literature Bureau.
Pacific Fisheries Conference
PROBLEMS associated with the catching, processing and market ing of fish in the South Pacific will be discussed at a fisheries conference representing six nations in Noumea on May 14. United States will be represented by Mr. O. E. Sette, Director of the Pacific Oceanic tions, Honolulu, and Mr. Vernon Fisheries Investigations Honolulu, and Mr. Vernon Brock, Director of Fish and Game, Territory of Hawaii.
The main objects are:— (a) To work out a practicable method of bringing together all the relevant information available on fisheries in the region; (b) To suggest the best way of in vestigating quickly the problems of catching, processing, transporting and marketing, and inducing people to increase the use of local fisheries products. (c) To make constructive sugges tions concerning a statement of the prerequirements for fisheries devel opment in the region; and (d) To consider and advise what role the South Pacific Commission could play in the development of the fish eries in the region.