Village
p. 143 · Read in the full issue
Rabaul Problem
Gaol Terms for Village Tax-Defaulters
From Our Own Correspondent SIXTY-FIVE villagers from the Reimber Village Council area near Rabaul have been serving gaol terms for refusing to pay their jannual Council tax of £4. ■ Twelve men of Rakunai, a village in the Reimber Council area, were sentenced on June 27 to one month’s Imprisonment, and another 23 were sentenced on July 6. ■ On July 22 a further 25—16 women and nine men—were sentenced. Some were from Rakunai and a few came from feakundakunda, a nearby hamlet.
I Fourteen other Rakunai men have been gaoled for two months for trying to prevent the arrest of 4he first batch of 12 sentenced for tax evasion.
AN Administration officer in daily contact with Native Village Council business has istimated that 60 per cent, of Ihose eligible for taxation at Rakunai were opposed to paying
taxes. Proportionately, of course, these comprise a fragmentary percentage of the 36,000 people under the Council scheme.
Rakunai is to some extent re moved from the influences which are rapidly educating villagers to a realisation of their own status as individuals, and, compared with other centres, it has a larger pro portion of people who are easily led by irresponsibles. The lack of law and order which characterised the Japanese occupation seems to have left its mark on the mentality of many in the village.
The tax-defaulters ignored the advice of missionaries.
The Village Council system, introduced within the last four years by the Adminstration in the interests of the people themselves, has already paid dividends in economic and social improvement.
Administrative costs of the system are kept low by Government edict, and all taxation revenue has benefited the taxpayers by way of schools, medical aid posts, cocoa fermenteries, better roads and improved social services.
A continuous audit of accounts is maintained, and there has been only one instance of defalcation— a matter of £6 drawn and withheld, for which the person responsible was gaoled for six months.
COUNCILS are elected by the people under their jurisdiction, and tax rates have to be agreed to by a majority of not less than 75 per cent, of the Councillors Tax exemptions are granted to those to whom payment would be a hardship. Appeals against refusal of exemption are heard by the District Commissioner.
Men pay £4 a year and women £l. The average income of the Councils is about £1 a head. For more than 5,000 men, women and children in the Reimber Village Council area, the intake in taxation is just over £5,000.
In 1951 the Reimber-Vunamami- Rabaul Village Council received £8,015 in taxes. In 1954, with the addition of Livuan and Vunadidir to the Council system, the income was £36,166.
There is no real poverty in the area. In 1953, income earned by men of the district in wharf work and in hiring lorries for carrying ships’ cargoes was more than £60,000 from one Rabaul firm alone.
Another firm paid out even more.
In six months of 1954 more than £16,000 was spent by villagers on new lorries.
Further, villagers’ houses cost only man-hours and energy, and gardens provide foodstuffs in abundance. For a majority, money earned is a provider of non essentials.