Status

Suva Finds City

Is Not All Joy

From Our Suva Correspondent.

SUVA, March 25.

NOW that the excitement is over, the problems involved in Suva’s elevation to city status, and its extension over the neighbouring peninsula, are becoming generally realised.

During the flag-waving in October, 1953, the former Town Council was naturally pleased with its enhanced dignity, and the Government was doubtless no less pleased to get rid of about 30 miles of indifferently formed roads, passing the buck to the Suva ratepayers.

Neglected maintenance in years when money and labour were cheap has left a backlog of work in the city itself. Many streets and more footpaths are in a bad state. Some busy thoroughfares have no foot oaths, and many roads need widen ing to cope with the fast-increasing flow of traffic. City roads have to be maintained, and the result is that querulous ratepayers in the outer areas engulfed by the city will see little return for their rates for several years.

Certainly a loan has been raised

for street and footpath maintenance and construction, but this will be spent mainly in the inner areas where for many years there has been little resealing, with consequent deterioration of the roads.

Meanwhile, the faulty sewerage system in the city is so overloaded that at places within a few hundred yards of the principal street the pan system is still in operation. t The farewell visit of the High Commissioner for the Western

Pacific (Sir Robert Stanley) to ti Gilbert and Ellice Islands Color was scheduled for March 28-April according to a GEIC news bulletii In February it was announced thi a pictorial souvenir programn would be produced for the occasic and residents in the Colony were ii vited to submit photographs. t The P and O liner Himalaya w: call at Suva on June 22 in tl course of a cruise which will ii elude Port Moresby.