Going Home To Mother

P-NG Admin. Will Pay Some Leave Fares

Rabaul, June 15.

THE Public Service Association has fought valiantly to have assisted passages for leave paid to the home-town rather than to Sydney and their prayers have al most been answered.

Members of the Association recently received a circular setting out the new regulations governing leave fares, viz: Single persons under 30 years of age will have their leave fares paid hack to their parents’ home for their first two leaves. Married persons will have their fares paid to the home of either the husbands or wife’s parents for the first two leaves. If a single person marries after arrival in the Territory the fares are paid back to the parent’s home for two leaves after the marriage. (Ed. Note; Presumably after 30 P-NG Public Servants are con sidered sufficiently adult to be weaned away from home and mother. With all due respect to the tribulations of Territory public servants, this latest c9ncession seems to border on the ridiculous.

Local affiliations of employees are not the concern of Government. At this stage, when economy is the key-note, assistance to reach Aus

tralia seems to discharge the Gov ernment’s liability quite adequately.

Public servants in Canberra do not have fares paid to Perth or Mel bourne just because their mothers happen to live in those places.) Puka Puka (Northern Cooks) had one of its very occasional visits from the outside world in June when Mr. D. C. Brown’s trading vessel Mahurangi called there and at neighbouring Nassau Island from Rarotonga, bringing supplies and loading copra.