[?]oresby

[?]ospitals for Lae and [?]oresby [?]till at Talking Stage

LiHERE is nothing now to prevent Lae and Port Moresby having new European hospitals except; » Canberra approval of plans afted by Works Department scialists in collaboration with the [ministrator; » Drawing up of plans and deifications; » Calling for tenders; » Letting of same; » Allocation of sufficient cash to Ty out the job; » Assembling of workmen and iterials; » Doing the job; • Furnishing and equipping build 's. in view of the above, no Terri lan will expect to see a new hos al at Lae (or Moresby) this year, jae hospital was a disgrace when aw it in 1946. It is six years more a disgrace in 1953. )ne evening' this April, with a Lae ident, I walked through the hos al; there was no staff about and ;re was nothing to stop our hav ; a quick look and forming our n conclusions. My own con sion was that if you were not ill

when you were admitted, you could be ill after a few days in that atmosphere.

The skill and attention of the medical staff are, no doubt, all they should be; but a sick person in that country needs more than medical attention if he is not to sink into the depths of tropical depression.

For inducing depression, Lae hos pital takes the million-dollar prize.

Its medical staff must be filled with a missionary zeal —there seems no other reason why they should remain to work in such conditions.

Moreover, the hospital itself refutes the theory that sufficient publicity will always win out—Lae hospital in the last six years has had more adverse publicity than any other New Guinea institution, and apart from a few minor temporary im provements, the results have been nil. Yet while officialdom has pro crastinated in the matter of pro viding this top-priority amenity in the way of a new building, others have not been idle.

BECAUSE the hospital is officially “temporary,” a new Catholic church, now building, encroaches upon it on one side; and a most elaborate cinema, complete with a dozen or so shops, all of which will cost about £70,000, is now nearing completion, close up against it, on the other.

Further away there is a RSSAILA Club that must have cost real

money, a hotel that cost £lOO,OOO. the large establishments of Qantas Empire Airways down on the flat and up on Namanula that probably cost a similar amount, just these few items of Lae real estate add up to a considerable sum —and one is sometimes tempted to wonder from whence comes the faith to back the outlay; for Lae, like

Moresby, is something of a para sitical growth. It has no industries of its own and its reasons for be ing are a dwindling gold industry at Bulolo, and an outlet for a small amount of coffee from Wau and the infant timber industry of Wau- Bulolo. Madahg probably will be accepted as the natural outlet for the wealth, still only potential, of the NG Highlands.

But there are, in the big and growing town of Lae, no lack of monuments to the faith of private enterprise.—J.T.

Money Lost To P-Ng

SPEAKING at the P-NG Legis lative Council’s May session, Mr. E. A. James, elected member for Papua, said that in the first nine months of 1952-53, only £751,955 of the estimated £1,601,000 for capital works for that year had been spent.

He gave as an illustration the £64,000 that had been estimated would be spent on hospitals in P-NG; in the first nine months, he said, only £10,803 had been spent. (This amount in P-NG would pay for only two very modest cottages).

He said also that in nine months only £90,000 had been spent out of the year’s estimated £212,000 for roads. At the same time, as the member for NG Islands, Mr. D.

Barrett, had already pointed out, it was difficult to get approval for the expenditure of certain sums

although they had been passed in the estimates.

Mr. James asked whether it would not be possible to overcome delays and the difficulties of getting approval for expenditure already passed in the Estimates, so that as much as possible of the amounts authorised could be spent in the Territory. It seemed a pity that,

having convinced the Council and' presumably the Commonwealth Treasurer, of the necessity for these works during any financial year] portion of that money was lost for ever. What they did not spend this year on roads or hospitals was not added to the amount which they would normally get for roads, etcj in next financial year.