is “Hopeless”

NG Labour System is “Hopeless”

THE world’s biggest tea and

rubber producing companies

would be “into New Guinea like a shot” if the labour position was not so unfavourable.

This is the belief of Dr. H. E.

Young, an Australian rubber expert who has just returned to Australia after six years in Ceylon.

He said that the P-NG system under which a native works under a contract for about two years and then returns to his village, is a hopeless proposition commercially.

In the East, labour was drawn from families that lived for generations on the tea and rubber istates. In this way labourers became experts and were not periodically lost to the planter o the industry.

He -said that several British companies wanted to build native villages on plantation sites mthe same way as was done in Ceylon.

TWs could not be done in New Guinea at the moment because of United Nations restrictions and the fear that natives might be “exploited” because officials believed that the transfer of natives to a plantation village would destroy their culture.

Dr Young said that present methods adopted by the white man tn educate the native peoples would destroy their culture anyway.

British companies .wishing to invpst in New Guinea would undertake to educate and look After the natives under their care, as they already did on plantations in Ceylon.

Dr Young is a native of Brisbane; he has been director of the Rubber Research Institute of Cevlon and a member of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.