New Zealand Gives £1 Million

All The Improvements Are Included

Enterprise To Western Samoans

A milestone on the road of West Samoa towards self government (target date 1960) was reached on March 31, when New Zealand handed over to Samoa control of the £1 million Reparation Estates. Samoans have enjoyed the golden eggs from this goose for many years; now they have the whole bird.

Reparation Estates was the New Zealand method of dealing with expropriated German plantations after World War I.

They were kept together and run as one Government enterprise.

In New Guinea (also a former German colony, of course) planta tions were also expropriated, but these came under the control of the Ex-Propriation Board, and almost immediately most of them were sold, on long terms, to soldier settlers in the Territory. These ex-German plantations in NG are still the basis of the copra industry in that Terri tory.

In common with the rest of the planting industry over the last 30 years, Reparation Estates in Western Samoa have had their economic doldrums and their booms, and dur ing the Depression they were re garded more in the nature of a mill-stone than as an asset. The pages of PIM of 20 to 25 years ago are full of demands that the Estates should be broken up, sold or simply given away in order that they should not continue to swallow up public money.

From the time of the Pacific War, however, planting of all varieties boomed, and the Estates have boomed also. Samoa, of course, was not a theatre of war.

In post-war years there have been fat profits, and these have all been diverted, by the New Zealand Gov ernment, to welfare projects for the Samoans. None of the profits have gone to New Zealand.

The Samoan leaders were pleased enough at this, but along with self government, they have hankered for undisputed ownership of the Estates.

Thus they now have, and presum ably honour has been satisfied. High Chief Tamasese has been appointed chairman of the board that will now nm Western Samoa Trust Estates Corporation, as the new set-up is to be called, and on taking office he said that never again would this land pass out of the hands of Samoans.

The land now taken over by the Corporation (about 33,000 acres) is less than one-third of the land originally taken over from the Ger

mans by Reparation Estates; over the years the greater part of it has reverted to the Samoans.

Reparation Estates engaged in copra production, cocoa production, timber milling, cattle raising—its herd of 10,000 beasts supplies Samoa with fresh meat—and numerous other enterprises.

Its cocoa plantations are world famous and have been of great assistance to other Pacific terri tories who, in the years after World War 11, established cocoa industries of their own.

The New Zealand government will still have a voice in the control of the estates through its own nominee to the board of control: Mr. Kurt Meyer, a well-known planter of Western Samoa.

Other members of the board are; general manager of the old Repara tions Estates, Mr. P. W. H. Kelly; the Western Samoa Director of Agriculture, Mr. B. E. V. Parham; High Chiefs Tamasese, Maliotoa Tanumafili and Mataafa, and Mr. E.

Annandale.

The board will decide on policy; the management will remain in the hands of the general manager, Mr.

Kelly, who succeeded Mr. D. R. A.

Eden, who retired from Reparation Estates last year.