Chinese In Ferment
p. 127 · Read in the full issue
Allocation of Lots in Rabaul
Rabaul, Dec. 10.
A CCUSATION and counter (\ accusation, engendering hate which is likely to endure, has >een the immediate outcome of the jand Board decisions in the recent ittings here.
With more than 200 applications or the 132 blocks of ground opened or tender in the Matupi Farm area, iot even a Solomon could have itisfied all tenderers.
Wisely, the Land Board sittings rere held in public. All applicants or land gave their evidence in the earing of their rival tenderers, who ere quick to point out even the lightest divergence from the truth.
Deliberate misrepresentation of icts, when discovered, meant auto lat i c disqualification of the nderer.
The greatest number of tenders, od the highest prices tendered ere for those allotments in the ■esent business section of New tiinatown. Since the War, this ction has grown to considerable immercial importance. General erchants, taxi companies, import s, and numbers of small trade ores and native restaurants crowd gether in a twisting warren of tivities.
Most of the larger merchants with tablished businesses retained their es. But many of the smaller iders have lost their positions or en allocated to an area outside e business quarter; and it is these ople who are complaining most terly against the findings of the ard—and they comprise a large :tion of the Chinese community.
For the artisan and the office rker, who, content to earn his liv r„ sought a home site, it was im perial where he lived, as long as could get a block which was his n. But for trade-store owners, s of their sites has been a major amity. lard work is a forgotten habit ;h these people and they have desire to relearn it. Crowded o windowless (and often doorless) /els that rival the worst aspects Hongkong’s Kowloon slums, they y on natives—whom they often ircharge—for their income, t might be no bad thing if it :ame necessary for them to earn lying in some other way. ’inalisation of the tenders as re amended by the Board will not the end of the oversize headache e of the conditions imposed by ' Board is that buildings of a tain value—£l,soo in some in- £3,000 in others—be erected the lots within nine months, ny of the successful bidders ther have, nor are likely to have, funds required to meet this imitment within the specified lod. ut that is something yet to come.