Suva Slum Demolition

Brings

More Overcrowding

SUVA, July 8 SINCE the hurricane (most things are nowadays dated Before or After the Hurricane), the Suva Town Council has jumped at the oppor tunity to start the elimination of some of the worst examples of slum conditions.

This is commendable enough, but nobody has yet produced a satisfac tory answer to the question of what happens to the people compelled to move out when slums are demol ished. More than two years ago a visitor to Suva for the South Pacific Conference publicised the Suva slums as a “scandal.” There was every justification for that.

No improvement was visible in the crammed tenements, huts and corrugated iron shacks before last January, when the big storm demol ished some of them and caused even more appalling overcrowding in a good many of those which survived.

Slum landlords have argued that they cannot or will not rebuild be cause they are unlikely to be able to obtain higher rentals from low-wage tenants. They say that if condemned

buildings are demolished by the Council they will make no further move.

There is no indication yet as to how the vicious circle will end. The Government has been building, mostly with local materials, housing for several hundred Fijian hurricane refugees and others at Samabula, but

this scarcely touches the problem as a whole.

Mrs. Iris Thomas, proprietress of a Norfolk Island guest house under went a serious emergency operation in the local hospital recently. It is expected that she will go to Aus tralia for further treatment.